Hugo Gaston, 74th in the world, was eliminated on Saturday May 28 in the 3rd round of Roland-Garros by the Dane Holger Rune (40th) 6-3, 6-3, 6-3, so that there will be no Habs 8th final. Gaston was the last Frenchman to be able to reach the 8th after the eliminations in the 3rd round of Diane Parry, Friday, and Léolia Jeanjean, Alizé Cornet and Gilles Simon Saturday. For his part, Rune will face outgoing finalist Stefanos Tsitsipas (4th) to try to reach the quarter-finals. At 19, Rune is participating in her third Grand Slam tournament. Until then, he had never passed the first round, neither at the US Open 2021 (defeated by Novak Djokovic), nor at the Australian Open 2022 (defeated by Soowoo Kwon).
Gaston made a name for himself by reaching the round of 16 at Roland-Garros in the fall 2020 edition: he beat 2015 winner Stan Wawrinka in the third round before losing to double finalist Dominic Thiem (2018, 2019). This year, the small Toulouse left-hander (1.73m) had overcome the world No.20 Alex de Minaur in the super tie-break of the fifth set after a long fight of four hours, before dismissing without wasting time the Argentinian Pedro Cachin (153rd) 6-4, 6-2, 6-4 in just over two hours.
For the second consecutive year, there is no French in the round of 16. Before last year, when there was even none in the 3rd round, that hadn’t happened since 1891.
