{"id":98771,"date":"2025-07-28T07:14:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T07:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/98771\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T07:14:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T07:14:13","slug":"he-was-just-one-point-away-from-winning-roland-garros-but-never-managed-to-win-a-grand-slam-title-before-he-retired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/98771\/","title":{"rendered":"He was just one point away from winning Roland Garros but never managed to win a Grand Slam title before he retired"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Having a championship point at Roland Garros without winning the title is something that Jannik Sinner experienced earlier this year.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sinner had three championship points against Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> in the Roland Garros<\/a> final that he lost in five sets.<\/p>\n

This defeat was crushing for the Italian, with Sinner needing time to get over<\/a> his heartbreaking defeat in Paris.<\/p>\n

Sinner is now a four-time Grand Slam champion<\/a> after winning Wimbledon<\/a>, but another ATP<\/a> player who experienced something similar was never able to recover.<\/p>\n

\"TennisPhoto by Eddy LEMAISTRE\/Corbis via Getty ImagesGuillermo Coria: The ATP player who was just one point away from winning a Grand Slam<\/p>\n

Guillermo Coria was one of the big favourites for the Roland Garros title as the third seed in 2004.<\/p>\n

The Argentinian was coming into the Paris major that year in impressive form, having won the Monte Carlo Masters<\/a> and reached the final of the Hamburg Masters in the weeks leading up to Roland Garros.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Coria continued this form into Roland Garros, where he reached his first Grand Slam final by dropping just one set.<\/p>\n

In the final, Coria would play an unlikely opponent in the 2004 Roland Garros final in his Argentine compatriot Gaston Gaudio, who was unseeded.<\/p>\n

Gaudio had never reached a Grand Slam quarterfinal before Roland Garros in 2004, leaving Coria as the big favourite to win the title.<\/p>\n

This was especially prevalent, as Coria had won three of his four previous matches against Gaudio, all of which were on clay.<\/p>\n

The expected outcome of the match appeared to be playing out, as Coria dropped just three games to take a two-set-to-love lead.<\/p>\n

Despite Coria leading the third set 4-4 40-0, Gaudio started to make a comeback and won the third and fourth sets to take it to a decider.<\/p>\n

Coria would regain authority in this fifth set, taking a 4-2 lead, and looked to be on his way to an elusive Grand Slam title.<\/p>\n

The then 22-year-old served for the match on two occasions, and had two championship points at 6-5 40-15, but Coria could just not get over the line.<\/p>\n

After hitting the ball wide on those two championship points, Gaudio would fight back to beat Coria, 0-6 3-6 6-4 6-1 8-6.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In his press conference<\/a> after the match, an emotional Coria suggested that nerves got the better of him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I was thinking too much at that stage,\u201d Coria said after the match. \u201cThere was one very long rally at 40-15. I was thinking that if I had won that point, I could have won the match. He won the game, unfortunately for me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen I was under pressure. I was thinking too much. What happened, happened. I have no words to describe it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coria was the first man to lose a Grand Slam singles final in the Open Era after having championship points, with there now three players who have lost a major final from match point up<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What happened to Guillermo Coria after the 2004 Roland Garros final?<\/p>\n

The other two players who lost Grand Slam finals after having a championship point are Roger Federer<\/a> and Sinner<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, both Federer and Sinner<\/a> have won multiple major titles, while Coria took a big decline after this heartbreaking loss.<\/p>\n

While Coria would still enjoy some positive results after Roland Garros in 2004, he would never reach a Grand Slam semifinal ever again.<\/p>\n

The Argentinian only won one more title in his career at the Croatia Open in 2005, and only made two more appearances at Roland Garros.<\/p>\n

After struggling with injury, Coria only played at Roland Garros again in 2005 and 2008, losing in the fourth round and first round, respectively.<\/p>\n

Coria suffered a dramatic fall down the rankings after playing just two matches in 2007, and was never able to return to form in his comeback from a shoulder injury.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

At just 27 years old, Coria would retire from tennis in April, 2009, and would never win a Grand Slam title despite having two championship points to do so.<\/p>\n

Although Guillermo Coria no longer plays on the ATP Tour, his younger brother Federico Coria has been an active player since 2010 and has a career-high ranking of world number 49.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having a championship point at Roland Garros without winning the title is something that Jannik Sinner experienced earlier…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":98772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[1479,64705,64706,62,1464,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-98771","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-atp","9":"tag-guillermo-coria","10":"tag-roland-garros","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tennis","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114929628994494946","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}