Wildcard Adam Walton has pulled off the biggest victory of his career at the French Open, staying cool in the Paris heat to shock a frazzled Daniil Medvedev for the second time in nine months.<\/p>\n
His victory came as Alex de Minaur was given an unexpected but welcome free pass into the last 32 because of an injury to his dangerous second-round opponent.<\/p>\n
Amid sweltering heat in Paris, the Australian No 1 will not be unhappy about being able to bypass the round after Belgium\u2019s rising star Alexander Blockx had to withdraw on Monday with a right ankle sprain.<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old Blockx, who has shot up to No 37 in the world and reached the semi-final in Madrid last month while defeating Casper Ruud and Felix Auger-Aliassime, had represented a serious hurdle with the pair scheduled to clash first up on Tuesday at Roland Garros.<\/p>\n
But the youngster was left crestfallen while practising on Monday when he turned his ankle in a training session.<\/p>\n
Walton meanwhile took advantage of one of Medvedev\u2019s Jekyll and Hyde days, hanging tough in the final set to come from behind and win 6-2 1-6 6-1 1-6 6-4 in three hours 22 minutes on Court Suzanne Lenglen.<\/p>\n
When he was 4-2 down in a much more closely fought fifth set after four curiously uneven stanzas, it looked as if the 27-year-old from Brisbane would miss out on repeating his previous career-best triumph over Medvedev at the Cincinnati Open last August.<\/p>\n
But he regrouped, won the next two games and then survived a couple of break points in the crucial penultimate game, before the former world No 1 imploded to be broken to love.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s huge,\u201d said Walton, admitting his weariness after becoming the fourth Aussie man to make round two. \u201cThat win in Cincinnati definitely gave me the belief. I believed and I\u2019m really excited right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
He reckoned the 32C temperatures certainly helped. \u201cWe grew up in the heat,\u201d he said on court. \u201cI really like it when it\u2019s hot in Paris.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walton must have hoped he\u2019d be enjoying an all-Australian second round clash with Alexei Popyrin \u2013 but the Australian No.2 suffered another dispiriting grand slam defeat, capitulating in four sets to American Zachary Svajda after a hot start.<\/p>\n
Popyrin, who was left tearful after losing in five sets in the first round at the Australian Open in January, again looked devastated after his 3-6 6-3 7-6 (7-3) 7-5 loss to American Zachary Svajda. His poor shot selection, with a host of ill-judged drop shots, eventually cost him dear.<\/p>\n
It was a match that the 26-year-old Sydneysider would have been firmly expecting to win after a recent spell of rejuvenation on the clay when he earned notable wins over Matteo Berrettini and Jakub Mensik at the Italian Open, while his 23-year-old Californian opponent had won once on clay this year.<\/p>\n
But it proved another disappointment for the man who\u2019s dropped from world No.19 last August to No.61.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wildcard Adam Walton has pulled off the biggest victory of his career at the French Open, staying cool…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-696289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}