“No one is a robot, I didn’t have the energy today. It’s something that can happen,” said world tennis number one, Jannik Sinner, after his defeat in five sets to Argentine Juan Manuel Cerúndolo, this Thursday (28), in the second round of Roland Garros.
“I had difficulties. I felt bad, my head was spinning”, added the Italian, who was the tournament’s big favorite in the absence of Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz, who was injured, and who now leaves the outlook very open.
Sinner, 24 years old, did not want to attribute his performance directly to the strong heat in Paris, in a match played early in the afternoon and in which he started very well before falling apart physically, 6-3, 6-2, 5-7, 1-6 and 1-6.
“I woke up this morning, I didn’t feel very good and I tried to keep the stitches very short. Also, at first I was hitting very clean, very well, and then I just hit the wall and that was it,” Sinner added.
Last year, Sinner starred in an apotheotic final at Roland Garros, in which he almost won before seeing his opponent, the Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz, come from behind in spectacular fashion.
With titles this year in the three Masters 1000 of the European clay tour (Montecarlo, Madrid, Rome), Sinner presented himself as the man to beat.
Heat in France
High temperatures are a concern in France. In Angoulême-La Couronne, in the southwest of the country, thermometers reached 37.8°C, a national record for a month of May, according to Météo-France.
Also in the southwest, a school closed until Friday afternoon (28) because the hallways reached 53°C on Tuesday, which made some students feel sick, a local official said.
“One of them even fainted and vomited,” said Florian Deygas, an official in the Landes region.
The heat also affects Paris, which could record an unprecedented sequence of eight days above 30°C in May, and wreaks havoc on the Roland Garros tennis tournament, on the outskirts of the capital.
The tournament team douses the clay courts with water after each set. At the end of each day, the courts are flooded and soaked “to replace the water in the different layers that make up the clay”, explained the head of maintenance, Philippe Vaillant.
