{"id":507838,"date":"2026-05-29T00:52:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T00:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/507838\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T00:52:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T00:52:14","slug":"jannik-sinner-knocked-out-of-french-open-after-spectacular-second-round-collapse-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/507838\/","title":{"rendered":"Jannik Sinner knocked out of French Open after spectacular second-round collapse \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jannik Sinner<\/a> described his shock second-round loss at the French Open<\/a> and the physical difficulties that scuppered him as \u201ctough to accept\u201d considering his incredible form prior to the tournament. On Thursday, the world No 1\u2019s body betrayed him as he suffered a monumental 3-6, 2-6, 7-5, 6-1, 6-1 defeat by Juan Manuel Cer\u00fandolo of Argentina.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tough to accept because of the position where I\u2019ve been in and everything considered, but now I have a lot of time to recover,\u201d he said. \u201cI won\u2019t play any tournament on grass before, most likely. Now I really need some time off, recover completely, also mentally, and then be ready to go again for Wimby [Wimbledon].\u201d<\/p>\n

This is one of the most shocking results in recent years. With last year\u2019s champion Carlos Alcaraz out indefinitely due to a wrist injury, Sinner was expected to win his first French Open title and become only the second man in history to have won every significant annual title: four Grand Slams and nine Masters 1000, the ATP Finals and Davis Cup. The first was Novak Djokovic.<\/p>\n

Sinner entered Court Philippe-Chatrier on a 30-match winning streak. Despite having never won in Paris, according to some bookmakers he was an even heavier favourite coming into Roland Garros than anyone other than Rafael Nadal in 2009, when Nadal also failed to win. No player in the world has even come close to consistently challenging Sinner\u2019s level over the past three months.<\/p>\n

It initially seemed like the Italian was cruising to victory as he rolled through the first two sets before establishing a 5-1 third set lead on Cer\u00fandolo, the world No 56. Four points away from an uneventful win, the Italian began to shake out his legs and stumble between points.<\/p>\n

It did not take long until he could barely move on the court. From 5-1, he lost 18 points in a row and five consecutive games as the match dramatically shifted. That sequence included Sinner receiving a medical evaluation leading 5-4 in the third set but trailing 0-40. He also asked the umpire Aur\u00e9lie Tourte if he could leave the court in order to vomit.<\/p>\n

Nothing helped. Afterwards, Sinner denied heat had been a factor and said he had been feeling dizzy and low on energy after feeling sick in the morning. \u201cWoke up this morning, didn\u2019t feel very well and tried to keep the points very short. Also in the beginning I was hitting very clean, very good, and then I just kind of hit the wall, and that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JuanJuan Manuel Cerundolo of Argentina shows appreciation to the fans after victory over Jannik Sinner. Photograph: Matthew Stockman\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

His demise swings the men\u2019s draw wide open. Alexander Zverev, the second seed, is the new men\u2019s favourite as he chases his first Grand Slam title. However, this is also the type of opportunity that Djokovic has been searching for as he continues his pursuit of an open era record-extending 25th Grand Slam title at 39 years old.<\/p>\n

Since the start of last year, the Serb has not lost a completed Grand Slam match to anyone other than Sinner and Alcaraz, but he has badly struggled to remain fit at his advanced age. He is the only former Grand Slam champion left in the draw, meaning there will either be a 25th major title for the Serb or a new champion.<\/p>\n

For Sinner, after such a monumental effort over the past few months, his failure to consolidate those results at the biggest clay tournament of all is devastating. His team will have to consider whether they made a catastrophic mistake by not withdrawing from one of the clay Masters 1000 events to ensure he was fresh for Paris.<\/p>\n

Soon after the match, the defeat still raw, Sinner said he would try to bounce back as soon as possible: \u201cI think many things together caused this problem today, but again, it can happen. I just need my time now to process what went wrong here and also that we can put in good practice weeks before Wimby. <\/p>\n

\u201cAlso, because after Wimby, we have important tournaments coming up, which you know, Montreal, Toronto, I don\u2019t know which one is this year. Montreal and Cincinnati and US Open. There are still plenty to play this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, the 17-year-old French sensation Moise Kouame continued his incredible breakthrough in Paris as he recovered from a break down in the final set to close out the first five-set match of his career with a monumental 6-3, 7-5, 3-6, 2-6, 7-6 (8) win over Adolfo Daniel Vallejo after four hours, 56 minutes on court. Kouame is the youngest man to reach the third round of a Grand Slam since Nadal at Wimbledon in 2003.<\/p>\n

Naomi Osaka, meanwhile, reached the third round of the French Open for the first time since 2018, defeating Donna Vekic 7-6 (1), 6-4 while Coco Gauff advanced into round three after swatting aside Mayar Sherif 6-3, 6-2. The world No 1 Aryna Sabalenka beat local favourite Elsa Jacquemot 7-5, 6-2 to set up a third-round clash with Australia\u2019s Daria Kasatkina, a former semi-finalist. \u2013 Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jannik Sinner described his shock second-round loss at the French Open and the physical difficulties that scuppered him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,220279,6,19,17,220280,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":["post-507838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-french-open","tag-headlines","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jannik-sinner","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116655132499876120","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}