There is a file somewhere in the ATP’s archive that lists the most turbulent opening weeks in Grand Slam history. The 2012 Australian Open, when Djokovic, Federer and Nadal all converged in sweltering Melbourne heat that seemed to melt the normal order of things.
Wimbledon 2010, with its legendary Isner-Mahut marathon that broke every record the sport had built over a century. The 2001 US Open, played under a shadow no tournament should ever have to carry. Those weeks have their place in the annals.
After the first seven days of the 2026 French Open, the ATP will need to create a new folder and put a lock on it, because what Paris has served up in the opening week of this edition has been, by any serious measure, the most deranged, drama-packed, physically punishing, narratively overloaded week in Grand Slam tennis in living memory.
2026 French Open Chaos
The World #1 Had The Match Won. Then He Didn’t
Jannik Sinner arrived at the French Open carrying a 30-match winning streak and odds so prohibitive that bookmakers listed him at roughly -10,000 to win the tournament. He was not just the favourite; he was, by the standards of pre-tournament calculus, a near-certainty.
He had swept all five ATP Masters 1000 titles in 2026, pulling off the Nadal-level feat of taking Monte-Carlo, Madrid, and Rome. Carlos Alcaraz, the man who had beaten him in Paris twelve months earlier, was absent through injury. The draw was open, the title was, on paper, his to lose.
Sinner was leading 6-3, 6-2, 5-1 on a sweltering day in Paris, but began to cramp up and could not overcome physical problems as he fell victim to one of the biggest upsets in Roland-Garros history. He served for the match at 5-2, then again at 5-4. Neither time could he close it.
From that moment, Sinner was unable to recover, and Juan Manuel Cerundolo took full advantage, claiming 18 of the final 20 games to become the lowest-ranked player to defeat a World #1 at Roland-Garros since 1998, and the lowest-ranked player to defeat a World #1 from two sets down at a Grand Slam since 1973.
Djokovic Fell, Too
With Sinner gone and Alcaraz already absent, 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic took to Court Philippe-Chatrier as the only former Grand Slam champion remaining in the men’s singles draw. He dispatched the first two sets against 19-year-old João Fonseca with the serene efficiency of a man who had won this tournament three times before. Then the teenager from Rio de Janeiro, who had come back from two sets down in his previous match, did it again.
Fonseca is the first teenager ever to beat Djokovic at a Grand Slam in the Serb’s 22-year career, the second player to recover from two sets down against him at a major, and the first to do so in 16 years. The Brazilian sealed victory with three straight aces before collapsing in disbelief, while Djokovic left Court Philippe-Chatrier to a huge ovation amid questions over whether this was his final Roland-Garros appearance.
For the first time since 1968, no former Grand Slam champions will play in the round of 16 of a men’s singles draw at a major.
The Heat Tried To Swallow The Draw Whole
While the upsets were rewriting the record books, the Paris heat was quietly breaking bodies. Former finalist Casper Ruud feared he had heat stroke after his first-round match but survived in five sets.
Jakub Mensik collapsed on the ground after achieving match point in a gruelling second-round match against Mariano Navone, with the fixture extending to five sets and spanning four hours and 41 minutes. The Czech required medical help, ice treatment, and a wheelchair after his body shut down at Roland-Garros. He came out two days later, received a 6-0 bagel in the opening set against eighth seed Alex de Minaur, and proceeded to win the next three sets without breaking a sweat to reach the last 16 in Paris for the first time.
A man who couldn’t walk off court forty-eight hours earlier was now dismantling a top-ten player.
Berrettini Reminded Everyone Who He Was
Matteo Berrettini arrived at the French Open on a wildcard, ranked outside the top 100, with a resumé that read like a medical dictionary. The abdominal tear of 2022, the foot surgery of 2024, the withdrawals, the re-rankings, the quiet question of whether he would ever be what he once was. The match was Berrettini’s first Roland-Garros round of 16 since his 2021 quarter-final run, and his first second-week appearance at any Grand Slam since 2023.
He got there by winning a five-hour, 13-minute battle against Francisco Comesaña, saving two match points and needing four of his own in a fifth-set tiebreak that ran to 15-13. The Italian pumped his fist at the sky with the intensity of a man reclaiming something that was taken from him. He was not wrong to feel that way.
A Teenager, a Wildcard, France’s Dream and the Cerundolo Nobody Expected
Moise Kouame, the last Frenchman in the draw, had spent the week turning Roland Garros into a personal fairy tale, coming back from 2-5 down in the fifth set of his second match, beating a former major champion on debut, becoming the youngest player to reach the third round of a Slam since Nadal at Wimbledon in 2003. He eventually fell to Alejandro Tabilo, who has quietly become the first Chilean to reach the second week of a Grand Slam since Fernando González.
And the man who knocked out Sinner? Juan Manuel Cerundolo, not Francisco Cerundolo, his better-known brother, the former top-25 fixture, backed it up with a five-hour, 58-minute epic to beat Martín Landaluce, the closing tiebreak running 10-8 in a contest which became the third-longest men’s match in French Open history.
Off The Court, It Got Stranger
Spanish world #23 Alejandro Davidovich Fokina was left stunned after his coach, former French Open finalist Mariano Puerta, abruptly quit via text message, blocked the player and his wife, and flew to Miami in the middle of the tournament. Davidovich then lost in the second round and confirmed what everyone watching already suspected: you cannot prepare for a Grand Slam third round from a hotel room, alone, reading a long goodbye message from the man who was supposed to be in your corner.
Then there was Rafael Jódar, 19-years-old, seeded 27th, quietly winning five-set matches on outside courts. A brief interaction between sets involving Jódar and a ball girl quickly gained attention online after a video clip circulated on social media, with some viewers alleging inappropriate contact but additional footage and eyewitness accounts later painted a more nuanced picture. He strongly denied pushing her.
The fuller angles backed him up, but for several hours, a teenager who had done nothing wrong found himself at the centre of a social media storm of the modern, ugly, shoot-first variety. He won his match anyway, and reached the fourth round of a major for the first time.
Is This The Greatest Opening Week In Grand Slam History?
For sheer narrative density, the 2026 French Open evidence is hard to argue with. The 2001 US Open carries the irreplaceable weight of context. Wimbledon 2010 has its singular, mathematical marvel. The 2022 Australian Open gave us Nadal’s resurrection from two sets down in the final after months away from the sport.
But no single opening week has delivered this combination: a world #1 collapse while four points from a win, a 24-time major champion sent home by a teenager for the first time in his career, a player hospitalised after his match who then bageled his next opponent before winning in four, a forgotten Italian reclaiming his story in five brutal hours, a wildcard teenager from Paris reaching the third round at 17, a coach ghosting his player by text mid-tournament, a viral controversy that turned out to be nothing, and a draw so cracked open that for the first time in more than half a century no former champion will appear in the round of 16.
Paris has done many things in its long, red-clay history. It has produced Nadal’s dominance, Djokovic’s 3 am thrillers, Francesca Schiavone weeping on her knees, Gustavo Kuerten drawing a heart in the dirt. It has never done a week quite like this one.
The French Open second week begins Sunday, and at this point, anything is possible. In fact, that phrase might be the understatement of 2026.
Main Photo Credit: Susan Mullane – Imagn Images