Britain’s Toby Samuel is one win away from a first Grand Slam singles appearance after beating former world number seven David Goffin in French Open qualifying to set up the most lucrative match of his career.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old was ranked outside the world’s top 1,300 12 months ago but has risen to a career-high 159th after winning four titles on the ATP Challenger Tour – the second tier of men’s professional tennis.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, he produced a memorable comeback to beat Goffin 5-7 6-3 6-3 in what was the Belgian veteran’s final appearance at Roland Garros.<\/p>\n
Samuel will now face Peru’s Gonzalo Bueno for a place in the French Open main draw.<\/p>\n
Samuel has pocketed 57,000 euros (\u00a349,300) by claiming the first two qualifying wins of his career at an overseas Grand Slam – boosting his total career prize money of \u00a3118,300 by 42%.<\/p>\n
Victory in his final qualifying match is worth an additional 48,000 euros (\u00a341,500), while it would also guarantee minimum earnings of 87,000 euros (\u00a375,200) in the main draw first round.<\/p>\n
“First of all, it was an honour to play against David in his last Roland Garros,” Samuel told the crowd on Suzanne Lenglen, the tournament’s second biggest arena.<\/p>\n
“You’re an inspiration to all tennis players out there, it was amazing sharing the court with you.<\/p>\n
“It was the craziest atmosphere I’ve ever been a part of.”<\/p>\n
Samuel missed much of the 2024 season with injury and said it was not until midway through 2025 that he felt healthy again.<\/p>\n
He has never contested a match on the ATP Tour but is now one win away from a first appearance on one of the sport’s biggest stages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain’s Toby Samuel is one win away from a first Grand Slam singles appearance after beating former world…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-654887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}