Canada's Auger-Aliassime gives up 2-set lead in French Open loss to Italy's Arnaldi

The Canadian Press

· Posted: May 27, 2025 4:35 PM EDT | Last Updated: 6 minutes ago

Montreal's Felix Auger-Aliassime is retired of the French Open aft giving up a two-set pb successful a 5-7, 2-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 first-round nonaccomplishment to Italy's Matteo Arnaldi connected Tuesday.

Arnaldi, who roared backmost into contention aft being soundly defeated successful the 2nd set, picked up his 4th and 5th breaks of the lucifer successful the last set. Auger-Aliassime saved 3 lucifer points successful the last crippled earlier his agelong instrumentality clinched the lucifer for Arnaldi.

The 36th-ranked Italian held service passim the last 2 sets, including Game 6 of the 5th erstwhile helium faced treble interruption point, to destruct the 29th-seeded Auger-Aliassime.

Auger-Aliassime, who had aesculapian timeouts earlier the 4th and 5th sets to enactment connected his near ankle, looked similar helium was headed for a convincing win. He picked up the archetypal interruption of the lucifer to spell up 6-5 successful the archetypal set, past served to emotion to instrumentality a 1-0 lead.

The Canadian carried that momentum into the 2nd set, wherever helium went up 4-0 by converting breaks successful Games 1 and 3 and serving to emotion successful Games 2 and 4, yet winning the acceptable 6-2.

Arnaldi past tied the lucifer 2-2 aft converting the lone interruption of the 4th acceptable portion looking progressively assured connected serve.

Arnaldi adjacent faces different Italian, No. 26 Flavio Cobolli.

Auger-Aliassime, who entered the clay-court Grand Slam connected a rotation aft reaching the semifinals of the Hamburg Open past week, failed to articulation chap Canadians Gabriel Diallo and Denis Shapovalov successful the 2nd round.

The farthest Auger-Aliassime has made it astatine Roland Garros is the 4th round, a feat helium accomplished doubly earlier losing to the eventual champion (Rafael Nadal successful 2022, Carlos Alcaraz past year).

Toronto's Victoria Mboko, the lone Canadian remaining successful the women's singles draw, faces Belgium's Eva Lys successful a second-round lucifer Wednesday. Mboko won her Grand Slam main-draw debut with a 6-1, 7-6 (4) triumph implicit New Zealand's Lulu Sun successful the opening round.