Day 4 at the French Open saw the second round matches of the bottom half of the men’s draw. While most results were somewhat predictable, there were some upset and some high quality tennis on display.
French Open Men’s Day 4 Recap
On the plus side
Stefanos Tsitsipas notched another comfortable win, this time against Pedro Martinez. The Monte Carlo champion hasn’t spent much energy throughout the first two rounds and looks poised to make a deep run here. He’s arguably the favorite to reach the final from this half of the draw.
The Greek will face John Isner in the third round. The American somewhat easily defeated Filip Krajinovic and remains unbroken in this tournament, with his serve firing at a level that makes him a threat to just about any player on tour. Tsitsipas certainly won’t be happy to face “Big John” in the next round, and Isner will believe that he has chances of winning that one.
Kei Nishikori won yet another five-set match. His record in fifth sets is now an incredible 26-7. This one was harder than most of the previous 25, with an inspired Khachanov firing bullets for a big portion of the match, but the Japanese eventually came through. It’s the kind of a win that will certainly make Nishikori confident of a big run here, especially with all of the “Big 3: in the other half of the draw.
Who looked bad
Roberto Bautista Agut lost in shocking fashion to Henri Laaksonen. It’s safe to say nobody saw this result coming, even if the Spaniard is now a mediocre 7-6 at Grand Slam level ever since he reached the semifinals of Wimbledon in 2019. This was arguably the biggest win of Laaksonen’s career, certainly at Grand Slam level.
Cristian Garin did manage to make it through in the end, but it was a massive struggle against a much inferior opponent on this surface. The level of tennis Garin showed certainly doesn’t make one optimistic about his future in this tournament.
Guido Pella has continued his tradition of disappointing results at Roland Garros. It seemed like he had caught a lucky break to make his first third round appearance here, but he once again couldn’t really find his game in this tournament and he was soundly beaten by Marcos Giron, who has booked a completely unexpected third round appearance despite being 6-2 6-4 5-1 40*-0 down in his first round match.
Match of the Day
This easily goes to the battle between Kei Nishikori and Karen Khachanov on Chartrier. It was both high quality and extremely unpredictable. At one point it looked like the Russian was going to run away with the match, but Nishikori kept pressing and eventually got the better of Khachanov. It’ll certainly go down as one of the best matches of this tournament.
Main Photo from Getty.
