João Fonseca plays this Sunday (31), starting at 3:15 pm (Brasília time), against Norwegian Casper Ruud in search of a historic place in the quarterfinals of Roland Garros — ESPN and Disney+ broadcast it. A victory would make him the first Brazilian to reach this stage since Gustavo Kuerten, in 2004. In the women’s category, Beatriz Haddad Maia from São Paulo was a semifinalist in the tournament in 2023.
Fonseca’s feat would be only the second by a “teenager” from the country to reach the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam in history — the first was Thomaz Koch, in 1963, at the US Championships.
After a first week of intense heat in Paris, the maximum temperature predicted for this Sunday (31) is 22 degrees.
The opponent is not simple. Ruud, aged 27, is 16th in the world, twice a finalist at Roland Garros — he lost the decisions to Nadal in 2022 and to Djokovic in 2023 — and the player with the most victories on clay on the circuit since 2020, with 146 triumphs. In this tournament, he reached the round of 16 after turning around a match that seemed lost in the third round, saving two match points against the American Tommy Paul.
The two have never faced each other before.
In the previous three rounds, Fonseca beat Frenchman Luka Pavlovic, overcame Croatian Dino Prizmic from 0/2 on the scoreboard and defeated Novak Djokovic after losing the first two sets — becoming the first teenager to beat the Serb in a Grand Slam.
Only three players in the open era (the period of professional tennis that began in 1968, when the Grand Slams began to accept professional players) managed to win two comeback games from 0/2 in the same Roland Garros tournament.
The winner will face whoever wins the clash between the Czech Jakub Mensik, 27th in the world, and the Russian Andrey Rublev, 13th, who also play this Sunday.
