Spanish qualifier Bernabe Zapata Miralles recorded a career breakthrough on Wednesday at Roland Garros, upsetting No. 13 seed Taylor Fritz 3-6, 6-2, 6-2, 6-3 for his maiden third-round showing at a Grand Slam.

Fritz acknowledged after his first-round win on Monday, a five-set victory over Argentine qualifier Santiago Rodriguez Taverna, that his Paris preparation had been hampered by a left foot injury.

”I spent two weeks in a boot up until basically last week,” said Fritz. “I flew here [last] Monday and that’s all the practice I’ve had after taking a lot of time off [and] not really doing anything.”

Although Fritz committed 30 unforced errors to just 17 winners across the final three sets, the errors often came at the end of lengthy baseline rallies where Zapata Miralles refused to miss. He drew a backhand error from the American to earn a crucial break at 4-3 in the fourth set, then fired down-the-line two forehand winners before converting his first match point with a smash after two hours and 17 minutes.

Zapata Miralles, No. 131 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, scored his first win over a Top 15 player. The 25-year-old will break into the Top 100 for the first time if he can reach the second week in Paris.

Standing between him and that goal is another American in No. 23 seed John Isner, who battled past French wild card Gregoire Barrere 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 7-6(5). Isner seeks to reach the fourth around at a major for the first time since the 2018 US Open.

Second-round singles play begins Wednesday at Roland Garros, with the men’s draw having been whittled down to 64 competitors over the course of the past three days. With the loaded top half of the tournament bracket in action on Day 4, marquee matchups are spread around the grounds in Paris.

Rafael Nadal and Alexander Zverev headline Court Philippe Chatrier, Novak Djokovic plays on Court Suzanne Lenglen, and Carlos Alcaraz features on Court Simon Mathieu.

In doubles action, defending champions and home favourites Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut open their campaign, as do top seeds Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury.

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[1] Novak Djokovic (SER) vs. Alex Molcan (SLO) 

The lone previous meeting between Djokovic and Alex Molcan came in the Belgrade 2 final last May, a 6-4, 6-3 win for the Serbian in his home city. Molcan, who qualified into that Belgrade main draw, was at No. 255 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings at the time; he’s since risen to a career-high of No. 38 after reaching two more clay-court finals in Marrakech (early April) and Lyon (last week). The 24-year-old earned his first Top 10 win in Marrakech when he beat Felix Auger-Aliassime in a third-set tie-break.

The Slovakian is coached by countryman Marian Vajda, who worked with Djokovic for 15 years before the pair amicably ended their partnership following the 2021 Nitto ATP Finals. Molcan, who beat Federico Coria in four first-round sets, is also coached by Karol Beck.

Vajda was a part of Djokovic’s team for all 20 of his Grand Slam title runs and began working with the Serbian in 2006. They briefly split in 2017 but reunited in 2018. The Slovakian’s wealth of knowledge about the World No. 1 adds an intriguing subplot to this second-round matchup, with Molcan sure to lean on his new coach as he strategises for his upset bid.

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Djokovic was sharp in his Roland Garros opener Monday, overcoming a bright start from Yoshihito Nishioka to ease through in three sets. The Serbian appears to be peaking for Paris following his Rome title run. He has now won six straight matches and 13 straight sets.

“I have been feeling very well on clay in the last three, four weeks, of course,” Djokovic said after beating the Japanese. “Excited to bring out intensity on the court and compete with the guys. I’m happy to be back. Roland Garros is one of the biggest tournaments in the world, and the memories from last year still are fresh in my head, in my mind. It was nice to be back on the centre court.”

The Serbian is aiming to continue his stellar record as the top seed in Paris, a distinction he holds for the fourth straight year and eighth overall. He has never lost before the semi-finals as the top seed, including his title runs in 2016 and 2021.

It’s great to be back 😃 #RolandGarros

📸: Adam Pretty pic.twitter.com/67xrf2MuOu

— Novak Djokovic (@DjokerNole) May 24, 2022

[6] Carlos Alcaraz (ESP) vs. Albert Ramos-Vinolas (ESP)

Countrymen Alcaraz and Albert Ramos-Vinolas meet on clay for the third straight year, with the sixth seed 2-0 in their ATP Head2Head series. Alcaraz won a three-setter in Rio de Janeiro in 2020 (he won the Rio title this season) and took a straight-sets decision on his way to the Umag title in 2021, the first of his now five trophies on the ATP Tour. Three of the five sets they’ve played have gone to tie-breaks, with the 19-year-old winning all three.

Alcaraz brings an 11-match win streak into the second round after his Spanish trophy double in Barcelona and Madrid. Playing in his second Roland Garros, Alcaraz justified his status as a tournament favourite by racing past Juan Ignacio Londero, 6-4, 6-2, 6-0, in the opening round on Sunday.

“It was difficult at the beginning, but it’s always special to play in such a great stadium, a great court,” he said of his Chatrier debut. “I’m really happy with the performance in my first match in Philippe Chatrier, and hope to play more matches in this court.”

Alcaraz improved to 29-3 on the season with the victory, his 29 match wins trailing only Stefanos Tsitsipas this year on the ATP Tour, as shown in the chart below.

Asked what he would like to improve about his game, Alcaraz referenced wisdom from 13-time Roland Garros champ Nadal: “I always say that you have to improve every day [even] if you are the best player in the world. Not in my case,” he said. “But for example, Rafa says that he always [works to] improve every day. I would say I have to improve everything a little bit. You can improve everything every day. And I would say everything. I have to improve everything.”

The Spaniard can improve upon his 2021 third-round run with two more victories this fortnight; he reached the last 32 as a qualifier one year ago before falling to Jan-Lennard Struff in his Roland Garros debut.

Ramos-Vinolas’ best result on the European clay swing was a semi-final showing in Estoril, where he lost to eventual champion Sebastian Baez in three sets. He entered Paris on a four-match losing skid but rebounded to defeat Thanasi Kokkinakis in four sets on Monday. The 34-year-old, who reached a career-high of No. 17 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings in 2017, won his fourth tour-level title in February in Cordoba. All four of his titles have come on clay (Bastad 2016, Gstaad 2019, Estoril 2021).

[5] Rafael Nadal (ESP) vs. Corentin Moutet (FRA)

Corentin Moutet defeated one former Roland Garros champion to earn a chance to play another — the tournament’s ultimate legend in Nadal. The French wild card beat 2015 champ Stan Wawrinka in four sets on Monday and will now seek to shock the fifth seed on Chatrier.

“Rafa, it’s my dream,” Moutet said of the all-lefty matchup. “He’s no longer my idol because now I’m on the Tour, but I started playing tennis while watching him. I remember his first Grand Slam. I even imitated him when I was a kid.

“[In 2019], I played Juan Ignacio Londero [at Roland Garros] to potentially play Nadal in the next round, but I missed that occasion, so I was always thinking about that. it’s a great pleasure to be able to play him on centre court or any other court.” 

Nadal breezed past Aussie Jordan Thompson on Monday, looking physically strong after his chronic foot injury hampered his movement in a Rome defeat against Denis Shapovalov. 

“It is a good start, of course, straight sets,” he said after the match. “That’s it. I played good for a while. Then [there are] things that I could do better and I need to do better. But it is a positive start, and that’s given me a chance to have one more day of practice tomorrow and then another chance after tomorrow.”

The Spaniard pointed to his movement and the speed of his forehand as particular areas for improvement. His match against Moutet will be just his seventh clay-court contest this season, as he missed the start of the European swing with a rib fracture before compiling a 3-2 record at the ATP Masters 1000s in Madrid and Rome.

Float like a butterfly 🦋#RolandGarros | @RafaelNadal pic.twitter.com/PocMlMayr5

— Roland-Garros (@rolandgarros) May 23, 2022

Best Of The Rest

Third seed Alexander Zverev has a tough second-round matchup against Argentina’s Sebastian Baez, who enters with a career-high Pepperstone ATP Ranking of No. 36. Baez won his first tour-level title in Estoril on 1 May and got past Dusan Lajovic in four sets on Monday. But Zverev will also bring great form onto Chatrier, having reached one final and two additional semi-finals in the three recent clay ATP Masters 1000s. The German beat Baez in straight sets two weeks ago in Rome and cruised past Austria’s Sebastian Ofner in Paris on Sunday.

Two more Top 10 seeds will go to work on the outer courts Wednesday. Ninth seed Felix Auger-Aliassime is set to face Argentine qualifier Camilo Ugo Carabelli on Court 7, while 10th seed Cameron Norrie faces Australian qualifier Jason Kubler on Court 6.

Auger-Aliassime earned his first win in three Roland Garros main-draw attempts by coming back from two sets down against Peru’s Juan Pablo Varillas on Sunday. The Canadian seeks to continue his run of reaching at least the quarter-finals in each of the past three Grand Slams.

Norrie won three straight three-setters to win the Lyon title on Saturday — his fourth tour-level title and second of 2022 — then eased into the Roland Garros second round with a straight-sets win over France’s Manuel Guinard.

In doubles action, Herbert/Mahut begin their title defense against the Belgian pairing of Sander Gille and Joran Vliegen, with that matchup closing play on Court 9. Top seeds Ram/Salisbury face Marcos Giron and Soonwoo Kwon in the Court 12 nightcap, while Kevin Krawietz and Andreas Mies return as a duo for the first time since winning back-to-back titles in 2019 and 2020 with an opening match against Lloyd Glasspool and Harri Heliovaara. The Germans could not defend their title last season and Mies was absent with a knee injury. Krawietz reached the 2021 quarter-finals with Horia Tecau.

Gilles Simon is not ready to bid adieu to Roland Garros just yet. The Frenchman, playing in his farewell Roland Garros ahead of his impending retirement at season’s end, rode a wave of crowd support on Court Simonne-Mathieu to thwart a comeback attempt from 16th seed Pablo Carreno Busta.

The 37-year-old escaped with a 6-4, 6-4, 4-6, 1-6, 6-4 victory after 1 a.m., winning the final four games of the nearly four-hour contest to thrill the late-night Paris crowd. Carreno Busta looked set to repeat the Court Philippe Chatrier heroics of Stefanos Tsitsipas with a comeback from two sets down, but could not get over the line despite leading 4-2 in the fifth after breaking serve to open the decider.

“It was a crazy match, an unexpected win,” Simon said. “When you’re on clay, it’s super long, and Pablo is a super solid player. You know until the end it’s going to be difficult, and unfortunately I was dropping a bit physically… In the end I managed to turn this one and it was really unexpected.

“It’s the most unexpected win I could have,” Simon said. “It was really hard for me to see myself as a winner today when I was just warming up and everything. I knew it would be really hard… When the match starts to turn crazy like this, it means you just have two players on the same level trying to give everything to win. Sometimes you win it and sometimes you lose it.”

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The victory, Simon’s first at his home Grand Slam since 2019, moves the Frenchman to within one victory of his 500th win. His lifetime tour-level record now stands at 499-390, including his 2-4 mark this season. The result is a dramatic contrast to his last Grand Slam outing, a first-round qualifying loss at the Australian Open in January.

The former World No. 6 will aim for the 500-wins milestone against Steve Johnson in the second round, after the American defeated Jiri Vesely earlier on Tuesday, 6-7(4), 7-6(4), 6-3, 6-2. 

Simon’s best Roland Garros results came in 2011, 2013 and 2015, when he reached the fourth round. A 14-time tour-level titlist, he has reached the quarter-finals at the Australian Open (2009) and Wimbledon (2015) once each and the fourth round at the US Open twice (2011, 2014).

Stefanos Tsitsipas completed his third comeback from two sets down to inflict more Roland Garros heartbreak on Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti on Tuesday evening. The fourth-seeded Greek started brightly but needed to dig deep in the end for a 5-7, 4-6, 6-2, 6-3, 6-2 victory that finished after 12:30 a.m. on Court Philippe Chatrier.

It’s the second time in less than two years that Tsitsipas has produced a great escape in the opening round in Paris. He also came back from two sets down against Jaume Munar in September 2020 in the rescheduled edition of the clay-court Grand Slam. The Greek repeated the feat against Rafael Nadal at the 2021 Australian Open.

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Musetti, the #NextGenATP 20-year-old, had a tournament favourite on the ropes for the second straight year at Roland Garros. He won two tie-breaks to take control against eventual champion Novak Djokovic in the 2021 fourth round, but faded late in the match. He put more of a scare into Tsitsipas on this occasion, clawing back an early break in the fourth set, but never got close to a knockout blow.

With the victory, Tsitsipas advances to face Czech qualifier Zdenek Kolar, who knocked off France’s Lucas Pouille, 6-3, 4-6, 7-5, 6-4 earlier on Tuesday.

More to come…

There’s something about Hugo Gaston and Paris.

Prior to his first-round match against Alex de Minaur on Tuesday at Roland Garros, six of his 16 tour-level wins had come in the City of Lights. Two of his biggest career results have also come in Paris, a fourth-round showing at this event in 2020 and a quarter-final finish last year at the Rolex Paris Masters.

The 21-year-old, No. 74 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, appears primed to create more Parisian memories this fortnight. Gaston fought off cramps and an 0-3 deficit in the fifth set to delight a packed Court Suzanne Lenglen crowd with a 4-6, 6-2, 6-3, 0-6, 7-6(10-4) win over De Minaur.

”The crowd plays a very important role. They supported me right from the beginning,” said Gaston. “I like to share my emotions with the audience, so this helped me. This gave me strength, because it was not an easy task at the beginning and the end of the fifth set. But I used the crowd. They were fantastic, so it was a great moment.”

It seemed that De Minaur would prevail after winning nine consecutive games from the start of the fourth set. Gaston completely flipped the script behind his variety — especially with his drop shot — to serve for the match against the speedy De Minaur twice, at 5-4 and 6-5.

But cramps crept in during the last couple of games before the tie-break. Gaston shook out his legs repeatedly while serving at 6-5, then threw in an underarm serve at 15/40. Although he won the point, causing the crowd to erupt, he was broken again to send the match to a deciding 10-point tie-break. With the fans rallying behind him, Gaston dug deep for another big victory in Paris.

”I came to this Roland Garros with very few matches and some questions on myself,” admitted Gaston. “But my game level was always good. I felt very well on the court and I had a few problems that made it so that I didn’t succeed. If it had been a loss, it would have been difficult to handle, but I gave my best and I’m very happy about the match.”

Gaston is still fueled by the memories of his two previous runs in Paris. He burst onto the scene two years ago at Roland Garros, when he reached the second week with a five-set win over Stan Wawrinka before falling to Dominic Thiem in an epic five-set battle. Last November, Gaston had his ATP Masters 1000 breakthrough by erasing an 0-5 second-set deficit against Carlos Alcaraz, winning 20 of the last 21 points to reach the quarter-finals.

But Gaston believes he’s a better player now than he was during his breakthrough two years ago. With a second-round match looming against Argentine qualifier Pedro Cachin and no chance of facing a seeded player until the fourth round, the Frenchman has the tools to match his run and perhaps surpass it.

“I think my game is better. I feel more strong in my head, in my game and my physical [fitness] also,” said Gaston. “I think I’m also a good person and a better player, too.”

Wesley Koolhof and Neal Skupski endured a rocky start in their bid for a maiden Grand Slam title together at Roland Garros on Tuesday, but the sixth seeds ultimately advanced to the second round with a 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 win over Tallon Griekspoor and Botic van de Zandschulp.

The leading team in the Pepperstone ATP Doubles Team Rankings, Koolhof and Skupski have won a Tour-leading four titles in 2022 including a maiden ATP Masters 1000 title at the Mutua Madrid Open in the first week of May. They were broken in the opening game in Paris by their Dutch opponents, who went on to take the first set, but Koolhof and Skupski recovered to complete a one-hour, 53-minute victory with the help of 37 winners.

Second seeds Nikola Mektic and Mate Pavic also enjoyed a winning start, overcoming Andre Goransson and Ben McLachlan, 6-2, 7-5. The win extended the Croatian team’s winning streak to 10 following back-to-back title runs in Rome and Geneva in the past two weeks. The streak marks a return to form for the 2021 year-end No. 1 pairing in the Pepperstone ATP Doubles Rankings after a trophy-less start to 2022.

There were convincing wins for other seeded pairings as the doubles action got underway in Paris. The 12th seeds Jean-Julien Rojer and Marcelo Arevalo brushed past Philipp Oswald and Hans Hach Verdugo 7-6(5), 6-3, while Marcelo Melo and Maximo Gonzalez, the 15th seeds, were 6-4, 6-2 winners over Aljaz Bedene and Filip Krajinovic.

There were some first-round upsets, however, headlined by home favourite Benoit Paire and his Spanish partner Albert Ramos-Vinolas edging past four-time semi-finalists Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah. Paire and Ramos-Vinolas, playing their second tournament of the year together after reaching the quarter-finals in Rio in February, claimed a 7-6 (4), 7-6(4) win over the fifth-seeded Colombians.

David Vega Hernandez and Rafael Matos dispatched 13th seeds Santiago Gonzalez and Andres Molteni with a 6-2, 6-3 win, while last week’s champions in Lyon, Ivan Dodig and Austin Krajicek, continued their impressive form with a 6-4, 7-6(2) triumph over eighth seeds John Peers and Filip Polasek.