Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares reach French Open quarter-finals

The pair have avoided the avalanche of seeds in the men's doubles at Roland Garros and defeated Indian's Rohan Bopanna and Pablo Cuevas of Uruguay 7-6 (7/5) 6-2.

Murray and Brazilian Soares, who won the Australian and US Open titles last season, are one of only three seeded pairs left and the highest ranked.

Murray said: " Always in grand slams, sections of the draw open up. It's rare that all the top seeds get through. This tournament everyone's been losing and we've kind of just been there watching.

"It's a big opportunity for us now to progress far in the tournament. We'll just do our best to focus on each match and fight for every point like we did today.

"It was a real battle out there, especially the first set was really close, really high level from everyone I thought. We're really proud of ourselves for what we managed to do today."

Murray and Soares, who had won only two matches during the European clay season prior to arriving at Roland Garros, next meet Santiago Gonzalez of Mexico and America's Donald Young.

In the second round, Murray and Soares defeated Mikhail Elgin and Karen Khachanov, the young Russian who faces Andy Murray in the fourth round of the singles on Monday.

The younger Murray has not yet sought advice from his brother, who said: " I think he's practised with him a few times so he knows what's coming.

"If Andy's playing well then I'm sure he starts as a pretty strong favourite. It'll be an interesting match I think.

"The guy's obviously playing well, he's taken out (Tomas) Berdych and (John) Isner so far. He's got a big game, big serve, kind of relies on that to win his points, and he can give his forehand a bit of a smash.

"But Andy's pretty good at returning serve and making it difficult for those guys after that. I think Andy will be feeling good after beating (Juan Martin) del Potro."