Clay Court Chaos: Today's Biggest Stories from Roland Garros

Roland Garros delivered another day of twists and heartbreak as tournament favorite Aryna Sabalenka suffered a shocking defeat, opening up the draw and leaving the women's title race wide open. We break down what went wrong for Sabalenka, how her opponent pulled off the upset, and what it means for the remaining contenders.

On the men's side, we discuss the unfortunate retirement of Matteo Berrettini during the second set of his match against fellow Italian Matteo Arnaldi. After showing signs of discomfort, Berrettini was forced to call it a day, ending his Roland Garros campaign in disappointing fashion and sending Arnaldi through to the next round.

Plus, we recap the day's biggest matches, standout performances, and the storylines shaping the business end of the tournament as the chase for the Coupe des Mousquetaires and the Suzanne-Lenglen Cup intensifies. 🎾🇫🇷

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Off the Court. I am excited to give another recap today, but before we could do that, I do want to address that I do have a very sore throat and a cold coming on. So if I sound a little bit not like my normal self, that is indeed why. Um I have indeed been burning the candle at both ends, as we do. Um, but with that being said, we are gonna give you guys a little recap. We are at the final couple days. There is three days or four days left of Roland Garrus. The tournament has gone by so incredibly fast, as most Grand Slams do. You blink and it's week two finals already. Um, so before we get into it, I want to give a massive shout out to Air Allo who are keeping us going while traveling. Um, Air Allo is able to be used in over 200 countries. If you guys don't know what Air Allo is, it is a sim data pack that allows you to connect and stay connected wherever you are. Different packages, different options. To find out more about it, click the link in the description and you get a cheeky little discount as well. Okay, so we're gonna dive straight into it. We are going to discuss yesterday's results. We had some doozies, we had some interesting results, some things we were not expecting. Firstly, we had Schwalinska, uh the qualifier, come through and beat Kellen Skya, which was not expected. Again, she's come through qualifying. Um, and just on that, she has earned more in this grand slam coming through qualifying. And we've seen this happen a couple times in the last year and a bit. We've seen it happen with an Aussie player, with an American player. I'm not gonna go through names and all that, but we've seen it happen quite a bit um where they come through qualifying and they just have a really solid performance and they end up in week two. Um, so yeah, there's some stats on that that we'll post on our social media, but definitely pretty impressive. Kellen Skya has played a great tournament, has played well. Um, and yeah, Twolinska just got through 7663 in an hour and 54 minutes to wrap up the first match on Center Court. Secondly, we saw Diana Schneider take out Irina Sabalenka. Yes, you heard that right. The number one seed has fallen at the quarterfinal stage of a grand slam. However, we're not surprised, right? Because this tournament has been full of upsets, it's been full of challenges, it's been full of walkovers, retirements, which leads us to our next topic in just a second. So many things that we don't expect. Um, so of course, um we'll get to that in a minute. Arena, I almost said Serena then. I'm gonna have to get used to that again. If Serena's back, she is back. But Arena um was winning the first set pretty comfortably, like one, six, three. Then um, as we were watching it, it just completely got overturned. Um, she lost her mojo in a second set. When she lost the second set, she completely lost her mojo. Um, and then Schneider was able to run away with it. Six love in the third. Two hours and twelve minutes, so not a terribly long match, um, but definitely a surprise with how quickly um how with how quickly it sort of overturned. Um, so that sets up a m a semi-final match for Schneider, which we will review that shortly. Um, men's singles quarterfinal action from yesterday. We had Fab Flavio Caboli take out Oger Aliassim. So number 10 C take out number four. Pretty routine there. Um, he did lose the first set, but was able to win the next three comfortably, six-four, three hours and 24 minutes. Um, and then of course the next match that followed with um Matteo Alnardi and Matteo Barrettini, the Matteo party. Um, it was an all-Italian party um for that match. And um, unfortunately, as most of you have probably seen by now, Matteo did have to retire from that match with a quad injury. Um, it's just really sad. It really sucks. We have seen him put in so much effort. Over the past five years, there's been so many injuries. He'll play for a few months, then he'll have to stop because he's injured. Um, and this was his best tournament result in a very like in five years, in a long time. Um, and that's important, and it's important to remember that he did make it to the quarterfinals. He did really well, and unfortunately for him, he wasn't able to finish out the match without it doing more damage, so he did choose to retire. Of course, that means his countryman Matteo Alnadi is through to his first Grand Slam semi-final. Um, and that scoreline was 7-5-5-2. So who knows which way it would have gone? But had Matteo Berottini kept going, um, it could have presented a whole host of problems for him, or it could have just been a small injury. Who knows? Um, but unfortunately, that was the way it ended for him. Plenty of other doubles action as well took place. Um today we have the women's semi-finals. We have, of course, Mata Kostiak, who will take on Mira Andreva. Um, as you guys know, Kostiak did get through with a win over Elena Svitolina just the other night. Um, she's 17 and oh on clay right now. Um, absolutely killing it. Excuse me, absolutely nailing it. Um and she is just doing so well. So I do absolutely think we're gonna see her in the final on Saturday. I do. Um, but can Mira Andreva stop her? We shall see. Let's see. Um, and of course, the other semifinal, I'm interested to see how this pans out between Schneider and Schwellen Skya. Will we have a qualifier in the final or will we have the 25th seed um in the final? We shall see. All that action kicks off in just a couple of hours' time. Um, and that pretty much we're getting near in the tail end of the tournament. The mixed doubles final is happening right now. Sarah Arani is out there. Um, we've got men's legends a little bit later on. Joe Wilfrid Songa and John McEnroe will take on Santoro and Matt Swalander. That'll be a fun one. And then a women's legends as well, Hingis and Safarova against Ivanavik and Golivin. So, for those of you who are familiar with those players, that'll be some fun action later on. And then the men's doubles semi-final, one of them and actually being played now, and the women's wheelchair singles quarterfinal. So a lot of amazing tennis still to be played today, a lot to look forward to. We will give you guys, of course, provided that I do have a voice tomorrow, I will give you guys an update if I do not have a voice. We will be back to preview the finals as they come through. Um, of course, we do also have the um men's semifinals to discuss on as well. That will be Sasha Zwerev taking on, I believe it'll be Kaboli. Let me just double check on that one. Have a look. Mensik. So Zwerev will take on Mensik and Kaboli will take on Alnadi's. So that will be tomorrow live on Center Court. Um, of course, which one is first, we don't know yet. Um, but those will be the men's semifinals matches to follow tomorrow. So, with that being said, um, I hope you guys enjoyed the tournament so far. There is still much more amazing tennis to come. Let's see how this pans out over the next couple of days. And either way, we're gonna have a new champion at Roland Garris on the men's side and on the women's side as well. So, we will talk to you guys very, very soon. Okay, bye.