Gael Monfils’ storied career at Roland-Garros is over, and it came to an end in – what else? – five thrilling sets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 39-year-old former top 10 player fell short of completing another\u00a0pulsating comeback in his favourite playground against fellow Frenchman Hugo Gaston 6-2, 6-3, 3-6, 2-6, 6-0.<\/p>\n
With peers and legends including Richard Gasquet, Sebastien Grosjean, Paul-Henri Mathieu and Yannick Noah watching on, the 2008 semifinalist was listless across the first two sets … until he found the special spark that\u00a0only\u00a0comes on Court Philippe-Chatrier.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Serving at 3-3, 30-30, Monfils hammered an ace, and let out a roar that brought both himself and a 15,000-strong crowd in the stands back to life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He won eight straight games on the way to claiming both the third and fourth sets, and he seemed positioned to pull off a comeback from two-sets down on Paris’ main stage for the second year in a row.<\/p>\n
But as the clock struck midnight, there was no magic left for Paris’ favourite magician. Monfils had nothing left to give, and Gaston eased to the five-set win in 3 hours and 22 minutes. Monfils won just eight points in the final set.<\/p>\n
While Monfils’ stay in Paris is over, with his\u00a040 wins remaining the joint most for a Frenchman at Roland-Garros in the Open era, Gaston’s continues.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old reached the fourth round in his Roland-Garros debut in 2020, and has now won at least one match in four of his seven career main draw\u00a0efforts at his home major.\u00a0<\/p>\n
More to come…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gael Monfils’ storied career at Roland-Garros is over, and it came to an end in – what else?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-459827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}