For a place in the final four, Zverev will face Argentina's Tomas Martin Etcheverry (49th), who fell 7-6 (10/8), 6-0, 6-1 to Japanese left-hander Yoshihito Nishioka (33rd), physically diminished.
This 2023 edition looks like that of rebirth for Zverev. Here is the 26-year-old German in the quarterfinals having dropped only one set on the Parisian clay, a year after leaving the Centre Court leaning on crutches after seriously twisting his right ankle in the middle of the semi-final against Rafael Nadal. The injury kept him out of action for the rest of the 2022 season.
"It's extraordinary that I'm playing the way I'm playing right now, I'm very happy, I'm back in the quarter-finals of Roland Garros, it's incredible for me," he said.
"I hope more great things are coming, now that I'm here, I don't want to leave," added Zverev, at best a Grand Slam finalist so far, at the 2020 US Open.
This is the first time since returning to the circuit in early 2023 that Zverev has won four matches in a row in a Grand Slam tournament.
As a regular of the evening session - it is his third match in a row scheduled for the evening - the great German has tamed the decidedly very windy conditions since the beginning of the Parisian fortnight and his opponent in just over two and a quarter hours.
Apart from two setbacks, when he was led 4-2 in the second set, and then when Dimitrov came back from 3-0 to 3-3 in the third, Zverev was largely in control of the game.
At 23, Etcheverry will play him his very first quarter-final in Grand Slam. Until then, there had never been any progress beyond the second round.
© 2023 AFP