The French Open third round kept moving on Saturday, with Aryna Sabalenka and Coco Gauff among the women in action and several matches already decided on a crowded day in Paris.
Naomi Osaka was also scheduled to play again, while Moise Kouame, the 17-year-old history maker from France, was back on court on the men’s side alongside Felix Auger-Aliassime and Frances Tiafoe. The day’s results had already produced one of the tournament’s biggest shocks when João Fonseca beat Novak Djokovic in five sets, 4-6 4-6 6-3 7-5 7-5.
That result sat alongside a run of other third-round outcomes that helped shape the Saturday order of play. Jakub Menšík beat Alex de Minaur 0-6 6-2 6-2 6-3, Andrey Rublev defeated Nuno Borges 7-5 7-6 (7-2) 7-6 (7-2), and Casper Ruud outlasted Tommy Paul 4-6 6-7 (4-7) 6-4 7-6 (7-4) 7-5.
The scale of the day was easy to miss if you looked only at the headline names. Rafael Jódar beat Alex Michelsen 7-6 (7-2) 6-7 (5-7) 4-6 6-3 6-3, and Pablo Carreño Busta moved on with a 7-6 (7-0) 7-5 3-6 6-4 win over Thiago Agustín Tirante. For a tournament in its third round, Saturday was already a day of both familiar contenders and sudden exits.
That made the unanswered part of the schedule more important than the results that were already in. The listing did not say when the remaining Saturday matches would begin, but the next names on the slate were Flavio Cobolli against Learner Tien, Francisco Cerúndolo against Zachary Svajda, Juan Manuel Cerúndolo against Martin Landaluce and Felix Auger-Aliassime against Brandon Nakashima. For readers tracking the draw, the French Open’s third round was still very much being written.
