French Open: Ons Jabeur runs out of steam as Coco Gauff grinds into semi-finals

Ons Jabeur saw her French Open campaign come to an end in the quarter-finals on Tuesday, but there are plenty of positives the Tunisian can take from Paris after a difficult start to the season.

Jabeur, 29, has endured another injury-hit year, with her chronic knee problem continuing to cause setbacks. When the world No 9 has been available to play, she's understandably been below her best; for a player who relies so heavily on touch, feel and timing, match sharpness is vital.

Only once this season had Jabeur won two successive matches – at the Madrid Open last month where she won three – so a deep run at Roland Garros was more hoped than expected.

Yet, the Tunisian played some of her best tennis of the season over the past 10 days in Paris, suggesting that even while she hasn't fully recovered from her knee injury, and may never, she's at least managed it effectively.

Better still, for the first set-and-a-half of her quarter-final against third seed Coco Gauff on Tuesday, it was vintage Jabeur; the eighth seed toyed with the US Open champion, who simply had no answer to Jabeur's giant box of tricks.

She was seeing the ball like a beach ball, timing her shots to perfection and reading Gauff's serve like a book. There was power and purpose in her groundstrokes, the slice stayed low and deep, and of course the trademark Jabeur drop-shot was dialled in. That Jabeur won the opening set 6-4, sealed with line-painting ace, flattered Gauff.

Then it all got a bit ragged. Jabeur looked to be closing out another routine hold when serving at 1-2 in the second set, but from 40-15 she lost three straight points - two of them loose errors - to hand her American opponent a 3-1 lead.

She fought back superbly in the next game to get the