The greatest upset at a Grand Slam in years just happened in Paris. Jannik Sinner — world number one, 30-match winning streak intact, overwhelming favourite to complete his career Grand Slam — has been eliminated from the French Open in the second round. He lost 3-6, 2-6, 7-5, 6-1, 6-1 to Juan Manuel Cerundolo, ranked 56th in the world, as temperatures on Court Philippe-Chatrier climbed to 90 degrees Fahrenheit and simply overwhelmed him.
Sinner becomes the first men’s number one seed to lose in the second round or earlier at a Grand Slam since Andre Agassi in 2000. He was a -50000 favourite going into Thursday’s match. Cerundolo was a 32-1 underdog — with live odds stretching to 100-1 at one point. None of that mattered once the heat took hold.
The Italian was cruising. He took the first two sets comfortably and led 5-1 in the third, a minute away from a straight-sets victory and the locker room. Then something broke. He lost 18 consecutive points, was broken serving for the match at 5-4, and walked to his chair visibly distressed. Medical staff attended to him. He left the court to have his blood pressure checked and his condition assessed. When he returned, it was over in spirit if not yet in scoreline.
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A Collapse That Has No Easy Explanation
What followed was painful to watch. Sinner bent over on the clay multiple times in apparent exhaustion, barely running, resorting to drop shots and serve-and-volley tactics simply to shorten points. He pressed ice bags against his neck on changeovers and cooled himself with a handheld fan. None of it was enough. He dropped 18 of the next 20 games as Cerundolo took complete control of a match that had looked completely beyond him ninety minutes earlier.
The heat had already claimed other victims this week. Casper Ruud described feeling like a “zombie” during his first-round match. Czech player Jakub Mensik collapsed at the end of a five-set battle on Wednesday. Sinner himself has struggled in extreme heat before — at January’s Australian Open against Eliot Spizzirri, the roof was closed and the match swung his way. There was no roof option in Paris.
Cerundolo was gracious in victory. “I feel sorry for him because he deserved to win a lot of matches, and of course he was deserving to win this match,” he said on court. “But then I don’t know what happened.”
The consequences ripple outward in every direction. Carlos Alcaraz, the two-time defending French Open champion, is already absent with a wrist injury. With Sinner now gone, Novak Djokovic is the only man remaining in the draw to have previously won a Grand Slam title. For the first time since Djokovic’s US Open victory in 2023, a major crown will go to someone other than Sinner or Alcaraz.
Before the tournament, Sinner was a -275 pre-tournament favourite — the second-shortest odds at a Grand Slam since at least 1990 and the shortest since Rafael Nadal‘s -400 at the 2009 French Open, where Nadal was also upset in the fourth round. The career Grand Slam will have to wait. The question now is whether it waits until Wimbledon — or longer.
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