Jakub Mensik collapsed on court after winning a draining second-round match at Roland Garros on Wednesday, then left in a medical wheelchair after medical staff helped him up. The 26th seed beat Mariano Navone 6-3, 2-6, 6-4, 1-6, 7-6, but the finish came with a cost: full-body cramps, a warning for taking too long to recover, and a clear message from the Czech player that the heat had pushed him to the limit.
Mensik spent more than four and a half hours on court and said the 32C conditions were so severe that he began to feel sick and could no longer take in electrolytes and water. He said it was “insane” to play in that weather, especially in front of the sun, and added that he lost his first serve after receiving a warning because he did not have enough time to collect himself. He also said the break between points was too short for recovery and that the rules were “super-strict,” even if he respected them.
The win mattered because it kept Mensik alive in a tournament week already shaped by punishing temperatures. Roland Garros has been played in unusually hot conditions throughout the event, and others have struggled too: Casper Ruud was affected by heat illness in his first-round match before recovering in the fifth set. Mensik’s own match was decided only after a fifth-set tie-break, and he said he would be ready for Friday’s third-round match against Alex de Minaur, the eighth seed.
The tension in Paris is no longer about whether players can produce long matches in the heat. It is about how much more their bodies can take before the tournament’s demands start to decide the results as much as the tennis. Novak Djokovic offered the same picture from another court the same week, beating Valentin Royer 6-3, 6-2, 6-7, 6-3 in three hours and 44 minutes and calling the conditions “very challenging.” At 39 years old, he said that playing three-and-a-half-hour matches on clay is long and exhausting. Mensik’s collapse made that warning look less like complaint and more like fact.
For now, the 26th seed says he will be back on Friday. After a finish like this, the bigger question is not whether he wanted to keep going. It is how many more players can survive a Roland Garros week that has turned every round into a test of endurance before skill.
