Thursday’s thrillers
What.a.day.
We’re all still recovering from the excitement and drama around the grounds on Thursday.
If you kept up with everything you can take a well-deserved pat on the back, but if you didn’t, here’s a brief round-up from our busy reporting team.
The story yesterday, of course, was No.1 seed Jannik Sinner going out to 56th-ranked Argentinian Juan Manuel Cerundolo, after the Italian had been two sets up when his body refused to cooperate any further. Chris Oddo had sauntered over to Chatrier to take a look – and what a match it turned out to be. Chris also took a look at the result from Sinner’s perspective. Not done for the day, Chris popped back to Chatrier to watch as No.1 seed Aryna Sabalenka moved past France’s Elsa Jacquemot 7-5, 6-2. He then, (does he ever sleep?) gave us a lovely profile of Romania’s Sorana Cirstea, who is planning to retire at the end of this season but is now playing better than ever.
Alex Sharp was another reporter who got slightly more than he’d bargained for. Little did he know that the match he was covering on Court Suzanne-Lenglen would turn out to be the longest clash of the tournament so far, as French 17-year-old Moise Kouame defeated Adolfo Daniel Vallejo. Lasting just shy of five hours, we hope Alex had remembered his cushion. Having got the feeling back in his legs, he was back on Lenglen to watch Coco Gauff defeat Egypt’s Mayar Sherif, which thankfully (for Alex) only lasted one hour and 50 minutes.
Dan Imhoff started his day with a profile of Argentina’s book-loving world No.60 Thiago Agustin Tirante, who is currently on Court 14 facing Spain’s former world No.10 Pablo Carreno Busta. Moving on to the day’s matches, Dan watched Belgium’s Raphael Collignon – playing in his first Roland-Garros – take down men’s No.5 seed Ben Shelton in straight sets.
Reem Abulleil made a guest appearance on the reporting team to give us an insight into the positive connection between Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk and her Polish coach Sandra Zaniewska.
Victoria Chiesa was keeping an eye on the night session, where Italy’s Matteo Berrettini was fit and firing as he moved past France’s Arthur Rinderknech.
We’ll have to get a bed set up in Blog HQ for Lee Goodall, who stayed up late to wrap it all up for you.