Novak Djokovic led by two sets and looked in control at Roland Garros, but João Fonseca answered by taking the third set and turning their third-round match into a fight. Fonseca then broke Djokovic early in the fourth, forcing the No. 3 seed to respond under pressure on a sweltering day at Court Philippe-Chatrier.
The match had already passed two and a half hours when the momentum shifted again, with Fonseca closing the third set with a pair of aces. Djokovic had opened the contest with the first two sets, but the 25-year-old Brazilian kept finding a way to extend the points and make the champion work for every game.
That mattered on a day when the French Open’s third round was getting underway and the men’s draw was already unsettled after Jannik Sinner, the top seed, went out the previous day. Djokovic is chasing a 25th Grand Slam title, and every set he drops makes that road harder in conditions that have taxed both players in the heat.
Fonseca’s response did not come in a single flash. It came after Djokovic had built the early lead, then lost the third set, then slipped behind 0-2 in the fourth before recovering to win three straight games. The swing captured how quickly a match can change on clay when one player starts landing first and the other begins to feel the strain.
The real question now is whether Fonseca can keep the match on his terms long enough to finish the upset, or whether Djokovic will use his experience to shut the door before the Brazilian can build another run. Either way, the fourth set has already turned this from a routine straight-sets task into the kind of Roland Garros test that can wear down even the game’s most decorated players.
