A host of title favourites live up to top billing as a barrage of debutants come knocking at the door
© Philippe Montigny/FFTIn this most unprecedented staging of Roland-Garros in a most unconventional year, it was always safe to expect a heavy dose of the unexpected.
While the leading title contenders have shone some 17 pretenders outside the top 100 across both men’s and women’s draws reached the third round.
Here are the top takeaways from a unique week one of Roland-Garros 2020...
Three names stood tall as the men to beat for this year’s Coupe des Mousquetaires when Roland-Garros first threw open its gates again in September.
Much was made of how underdone second seed Rafael Nadal and third seed Dominic Thiem might be without the matches on the red stuff under their belts coming in.
Novak Djokovic, on the other hand, had the runs on the board having filed his shock US Open disqualification to the back of his memory bank to land a record 36th Masters 1000 crown in Rome.
If all three started as title favourites, that has only been further established in the week since. Yet to have dropped a set between them, all three emphatically allayed any concerns about working their way into a slower, heavier Roland-Garros than usual.
Djokovic was particularly stingy, surrendering five games at most in each match, while he and Nadal each picked off a couple of bagel sets. Thiem, with arguably the toughest draw, handled with ease former US Open champion Marin Cilic, former No.8 Jack Sock and in-form dirt-baller Casper Ruud.
It was one of the biggest boilovers of last year’s Roland-Garros when unseeded American 17-year-old Amanda Anisimova sent defending champion Simona Halep packing. The teenager’s all-out aggression left Halep with no answers first time round. Not so much the second time round. The Romanian completely dominated her younger opponent 6-0, 6-1 to claim her 17th straight win and reach the fourth round.
"I took the game in my hands," Halep said. "Last year, I was very far from the court, and I played fairly short so [Anisimova] could play her game.
"When she has time and she has the ball in the right position, she is very, very dangerous and she plays great. So today I think I did a great job changing a little bit the tactic."
Sebastian Korda, son of 1992 finalist and 1998 Australian Open champion Petr Korda and former world No.26 Regina Rajchrtova, had pedigree on his side.
With two older sisters already professional golfers, it was time for the youngest of the athletically blessed family to make his mark. After winning through qualifying, the 20-year-old became the first man born in the 2000s to reach the second week at Roland-Garros with his defeat of Spain's Pedro Martinez.
The 20-year-old American became the lowest-ranked man – at No.213 – to reach the fourth round at a Grand Slam since Guillermo Cañas at the 2004 Australian Open.
Korda barely had time to let that record sink in before it was broken less than two hours later, when world No.239 French wild card Hugo Gaston stole his thunder. The pair became the first men’s players ranked outside the top 200 to reach the last 16 at Roland-Garros since Arnaud di Pasquale in 2002.
The 20-year-old Gaston had never won a tour-level match before Roland-Garros and had lost four straight Challenger main draw matches.
Fair to say a run to the third round to face former champion Stan Wawrinka was an achievement in itself.
Few expected him to top that career highlight to date with victory over the triple Grand Slam winner, 2-6, 6-3, 6-3, 4-6, 6-0.
“For the moment it’s a dream,” Gaston said. “Now I play [Roland-Garros]. Before I always watching this in TV. Today I can play in these courts, so it's amazing for me."
Gaston became the first French player to reach the fourth round in his Roland-Garros debut since Patrice Dominguez in 1971 and is guaranteed to leave Paris with $221,485 in prize money should he fall to Thiem. He had $171,247 in career earnings to his name before the tournament.
Following a semi-final defeat to Victoria Azarenka in last month’s US Open, Serena Williams immediately set about rehabilitating her body and beginning the transition to clay, training in the south of France.
And so began the 39-year-old’s 10th Grand Slam campaign with a record-equalling 24th major trophy on the line. After a first-round victory over Kristie Ahn an Achilles ailment forced her withdrawal ahead of a clash with Tsvetana Pironkova.
“I'm so close to some things, so I feel like I'm almost there,” Williams said after her withdrawal. “I think that's what keeps me going.”
It now means Williams has not won a major since the 2017 Australian Open – the longest Slam drought in her 22 years on tour.
A 36-point tiebreak in the third set of the match between Italy’s Lorenzo Sonego and American Taylor Fritz was the longest tiebreak in Roland-Garros history.
Sonego saved nine set points and won it 19-17 on his seventh match point to complete a straight-sets victory against the 27th seed.
It equalled the longest singles tiebreak played at Roland-Garros, which Denisa Allertova claimed on her way to beating Johanna Konta in the opening round five years ago.
It fell just two points shy of the longest in Grand Slam history between Jo-Wilfred Tsonga and Andy Roddick in the first round of the 2007 Australian Open.
Sonego’s record-equalling tiebreak carried him to a maiden Grand Slam fourth round, where he is joined by Italian compatriot, 19-year-old Jannik Sinner.
The two were among an Open Era record five Italians – including Matteo Berettini, Marco Cecchinato and Stefano Travaglia – who reached the third round.
Sinner has yet to drop a set ahead of his clash with No.6 seed Alexander Zverev.
The teenager easily accounted for No.11 seed David Goffin in his first match and became youngest man to reach the fourth round at Roland-Garros since Djokovic in 2006 and the sixth youngest to advance as far in the past 25 years after Marat Safin, Roger Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Tommy Robredo.
"You can still improve everything," Sinner said of his game. "I mean especially when you're young like me and since it's all ways to improve. So I think from now to one year ago I've improved and I think that's the most important thing."
What a difference a week has made for 24-year-old Mayar Sherif. Virtually unknown outside ITF-level events, the world No.172 romped through three rounds of qualifying to become the first Egyptian woman to qualify for a Grand Slam main draw. The Cairene’s dream run was not over yet. She went on to reach the second round where she pushed No.2 seed Karolina Pliskova to three sets and drew high praise from the ‘Egyptian King’, Liverpool football legend, Mo Salah.
Tunisian world No.35 Ons Jabeur had given her fellow North African tips for her qualifying run and not to be outdone, became the first Arab woman to reach the fourth round at Roland-Garros on Saturday.
Zhang Shuai had reached Grand Slam quarter-finals at the Australian Open in 2016 and Wimbledon last year, but there was added significance in beating French former junior No.1 Clara Burel on Saturday. The 31-year-old became the first Chinese player to reach the fourth round in Paris since former champion Li Na in 2012.
When Paula Badosa became a junior Roland-Garros champion in 2015, it was meant to be the launching pad to bigger things. Earmarked as Spain’s next great hope, the burden of expectation proved stifling in subsequent years.
It was not until this year’s Australian Open the 22-year-old won her first Grand Slam match. Now she has won three – beating major champions Sloane Stephens and Jelena Ostapenko back-to-back – to reach the fourth round for the first time.
“In my country they said to me I had to be the next Sharapova and a lot of expectations and I wasn’t ready for that,” Badosa said. “I had a very bad two to three years. But then I stopped myself and I tried to start to work from zero… I’ve tried to have stability outside of tennis and try to be happy and that’s what I’ve done now.”
An astonishing 17 men and women ranked outside the world’s top 100 made huge strides in a damper, cloudier Paris during week one.
Of those, there were eight women outside the top 100 into the third round: Irina Bara (No.105), Barbora Krejcikova (No.114), Nadia Podoroska (No.131), Tsvetana Pironkova (No.157), Martina Trevisan (No.159), Anna Karolina Schmiedlova (No.161), former semi-finalist Eugenie Bouchard (No.168), Clara Burel (No.357) and an extra mention for last year’s junior champion, Leylah Fernandez at No.100. Of these, three survived to reach the fourth round.
Nine men outside the top 100 in the third round was the most at a major since that many made it as far at Wimbledon in 1994 and not since 1985 at Roland-Garros.
These men were Spaniards Robert Carballes Baena (No.101) and Pedro Martinez (No.105), Slovak Norbert Gombos (No.106), Italian former semi-finalist Cecchinato (No.110), South African former dual Grand Slam finalist Kevin Anderson (No.118), Colombian Daniel Elahi Galan (No.153), German Daniel Altmaier (No.186) American Sebastian Korda (No.213) and Frenchman Hugo Gaston (No.239). Only three of these stood standing after Saturday.
Following the tour’s resumption from a pandemic hiatus, building momentum has become quite the challenge given the lack of events. But after his extraordinary breakthrough to win the US Open trophy last month, Thiem seamlessly switched to the red dirt in Paris to carry a 10-match winning streak into the fourth round.
After his US Open disqualification, Djokovic has reeled off eight wins on the trot on clay, including a title in Rome, as has Andrey Rublev, on the back of a trophy in Hamburg.
Frenchwoman Fiona Ferro has carried a title run from Palermo to reach eight straight wins heading into her fourth round against Sofia Kenin, while Elina Svitolina’s Strasbourg title has her poised on seven.
Halep enters her last-16 meeting with Swiatek riding a 17-match winning streak that started back in February.
ROLAND-GARROS
20 May - 9 June 2024
