Former champ Wawrinka faces familiar foe while Muguruza and Svitolina square off.
Amid a stacked Day 6 schedule, here are four stand-out showdowns to catch at Roland-Garros on Friday.
It had been a slow road back for 2015 Roland-Garros champion Stan Wawrinka since two knee surgeries, so following three straight losses on clay before Paris it was little wonder the Swiss deemed his routing of clay-court dark horse Cristian Garin “the most complete” match of his past few months.
Next up, it’s fellow former world No.3, Grigor Dimitrov. The pair has split eight previous meetings with Wawrinka winning first-round encounters at Wimbledon and US Open last year as well as their first meeting at Australian Open 2011. This will complete their box set of slam encounters. For Dimitrov, it will be his third straight former top-10 opponent, having survived Janko Tipsarevic and No.11 seed Marin Cilic in five-set tussles. The Bulgarian will look to pass the third round at Roland-Garros for the first time in four attempts.
Last year, 2017 champion Garbine Muguruza and Elina Svitolina entered Roland-Garros as top four seeds. After a challenging 12 months for both, No.9 seed Svitolina heads into the third-round showdown with the Spanish 19th seed holding a 5-3 advantage.
The Ukrainian won their most recent encounter in Dubai in February and picked up her first match win on clay for the year over Venus Williams in the opening round in Paris. A second-round walkover from childhood friend Kateryna Kozlova meant she had only spent 75 minutes on court, while Muguruza rebounded from a shaky first-round meeting with Taylor Townsend to breeze past Swede Johanna Larsson.
Two German qualifiers sharing a first name Yannick - Hanffman and Maden - did little to trouble 11-time champion Nadal in the opening two rounds but the Spaniard’s next outing against former top-tenner, David Goffin, could prove trickier. While Nadal has never dropped a set to the Belgian in three prior clay-court meetings, Goffin did beat Nadal en route to the ATP Finals decider in 2017.
Goffin arrived in Paris with only 10 wins for the season, while Nadal only won his first title for the year two weeks ago in Rome, a lighter clay-court trophy haul by his standards. “It is probably the ultimate challenge,” Goffin said of facing Nadal in a best-of-five match at Roland-Garros. “I need to use angles. I need to play early.”
World No.2 Pliskova firmed into Roland-Garros title contention when she won Rome leading in. On Wednesday, she continued her recent red-hot run, winning her seventh straight clay-court match to book a third-round showdown with Croatia's Martic, whom the Czech saw off in their only previous meeting en route to the Miami final in March.
Both players cruised through their second-round assignments; Pliskova dropping just four games against Kristina Kucova and Martic thrashing home hope Kristina Mladenovic. “My analysis is very simple: She just dominated me in every single field of the game today,” Mladenovic concluded.
ROLAND-GARROS
20 May - 9 June 2024
