Photo credit: ROLEX
A pair of French Open finalists bit the crushed red brick dust today.
Two-time Roland Garros runner-up Casper Ruud succumbed to a cranky left knee and gritty Nuno Borges 2-6, 6-4, 6-1, 6-0 in a second-round Roland Garros upset.
Weeks after capturing his maiden ATP Masters 1000 championship in Madrid, Ruud made ignominious history of his own.
It is Ruud’s earliest exit in Paris since his 2018 debut. Ruud saw his quest for a fourth consecutive Roland Garros semifinal go up in a cloud of red dust as he hobbled through losing 12 of the 13 games.
“It’s hopefully nothing too serious. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been kind of struggling a little bit with knee pain on and off,” Ruud told the media in Paris. “That’s why I decided to pull out of Geneva after Rome, do my best, and heal to be ready here.
“When you’re practicing, leading up to the tournament, it’s easier to avoid certain movements that are painful. It’s not painful. Everything is not painful. But certain movements out there are kind of what makes it painful. Certain shots are painful to do.
“When you’re playing matches, you can’t really control it in the same way. You do everything you can to get to every ball. Sometimes you kind of forget that this is a shot I shouldn’t go for maybe in terms of pain in the knee. That’s pretty much all.”
The seventh-seeded Ruud joins fourth-seeded Taylor Fritz, who fell to Daniel Altmaier in round one, and Daniil Medvedev, who served for the match before bowing to Cameron Norrie in a five-set thriller yesterday, as the third Top 11-men’s seed to fall in the first two rounds.
“I actually felt it quite early in the first set,” Ruud told the media in Paris. “I can tell you like one of the shots that hurts the most is to do, like, sliding on the left foot, an open-stance backhand is what hurts the most, as it’s the left knee.
“It’s very, very specific. But when you rotate my foot inward, it also hurts a little on the left.”
Italian qualifier Matteo Gigante outclassed and overwhelmed 2021 Roland Garros finalist Stefanos Tsitsipas 6-4, 5-7, 6-2, 6-4 to reach the third round in a stunner on scenic Court Simonne Mathieu.
Playing just his second major main draw, the world No. 167 Gigante scored gigantic upset.
It marks the first time Gigante has won back-to-back Tour-level matches in his career and snaps Tsitsipas’ streak of six straight years reaching at least the French Open fourth round.
“For sure was my big win of my career, for sure,” Gigante said. “I’m really happy to play every points of this match. Tsitsipas, he’s a very good player. I do a really big win.”
Afterward, a disconsolate Tsitispas said Gigante simply outplayed him and called his performance “immature.”
“I think he did that exceptionally well. He handled the pressure moments very well,” Tsitsipas said. “Played mature tennis. I seemed to be playing immature sometimes during the match, and obviously I’m not extremely happy about that.
“So I’ve got to compartmentalize myself a little bit and try and get back to my old routines, the way I was able to construct certain things and not have things kind of flow out of control the way they did today. But on the other hand, I also have to obviously give credit to him, because he made me reach that stage too.”
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