Flavio Cobolli survived a tense finish to his fourth-round match, holding off a spirited rally from Zachary Svajda to reach the Roland Garros Round of 16.

Cobolli moved ahead 5-1 in the fourth set with hopes of finishing in under three hours, but Svajda fought back to win five consecutive games. The No. 10 seed was broken twice while serving for the match and missed a match point at 5-4. Cobolli dropped a mini break at 5-4 in the tiebreak but steadied to close out the victory and avoid a deciding set.

Speaking on Court Philippe Chatrier after the match, Cobolli did not hide how close the moment came to slipping away. “The only thing that I understood today is that the match is never done. I almost sh\ my pants,” he told the Court Philippe Chatrier crowd. “Now I’m happy but I’m still nervous. I have to recover a bit now.”

In the press, he reflected on how pressure affects his game. “I think when the match is almost done, you start to think of it, and that’s the problem with my character, because I don’t like to think a bit. I just want to play my best tennis possible. But if I think, especially if I’m nervous, I start to play a different tennis, and of course the Chatrier is not easy for everyone. So I think also the court was tough.”

Asked about the celebration on court that followed, Cobolli said, “I think they deserve to win the Champions League,” in reference to the ceremony he returned to Chatrier to attend.

The 24-year-old reached the third Saturday at a major for the second time, matching his best Grand Slam run after a quarterfinal appearance at Wimbledon last summer. He is the only man to reach the round of 16 without dropping a set this fortnight. Cobolli has 13 wins in this season’s European clay swing, including victories over Alexander Zverev in Munich and a Top 10 win over Daniil Medvedev en route to a Madrid quarterfinal.

Cobolli will next face the winner of fourth-seeded Felix Auger-Aliassime and Alejandro Tabilo. Two countrymen, Matteo Berrettini and Matteo Arnaldi, were due on court later Monday.

Serena Williams has confirmed she will return to competitive tennis at 44, accepting a wild card to play doubles at the HSBC Championships at Queen’s Club. It will be her first tournament appearance since the third round of the 2022 US Open, the match that accompanied an announced “evolution” away from the sport.

Williams remains one of the most decorated players of the Open Era. She turned professional in 1995 at 14, won 23 Grand Slam titles—surpassing Stefanie Graf at the 2017 Australian Open—and spent 319 weeks as the WTA’s world No. 1, the third-longest total behind Graf and Martina Navratilova. Rather than a formal retirement in 2022, Williams described her shift in status as an “evolution.”

Off court, Williams is a mother of two. Her elder daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr., was born in 2017, and her second daughter, Adira River, arrived in 2023. During her time away from regular competition she has pursued business projects and taken on a role as a spokesperson for Ro, a telehealth company that markets GLP-1 weight-loss medications. Williams said she lost 34 pounds on Zepbound and appeared in a Ro commercial that aired during Super Bowl LX earlier this year.

Her elder sister Venus has continued competing into her 40s, becoming the oldest woman to win a professional tennis match in more than 20 years at the Mubadala Citi DC Open last summer and reaching the US Open quarterfinals in women’s doubles alongside Leylah Fernandez. After Venus pushed Karolina Muchova to three sets at the US Open in singles, Serena paid tribute on social media: “Strength, courage, determination, class, perseverance, inspiration… there’s not enough words to describe how proud I am of you @VenusWilliams,” Serena captioned. “P.S. I hope to be like you.”

It was around that time that speculation about Serena’s own return gathered pace, and in December she re-entered the International Tennis Integrity Association’s anti-doping testing pool, a move that helped fuel comeback rumours ahead of her doubles entry at Queen’s Club.

Joao Fonseca converted the momentum from his comeback over Novak Djokovic into another breakthrough at Roland Garros, reaching his first Grand Slam quarterfinal with a four-set victory over Casper Ruud. The 19-year-old, seeded 28th, defeated the two-time finalist 7-5, 7-6 (8), 5-7, 6-2 in a match that lasted three hours and 55 minutes.

Fonseca faced a critical moment in the second-set tiebreak, saving three set points. The most controversial point came at 8-7 when chair umpire Louise Engzell ruled that Fonseca’s forehand had caught the line after a spectator shouted “out!” just before Ruud misplayed the ball. Broadcast replays showed that electronic line calling (ELC) disagreed with Engzell. The other three Grand Slam events, as well as tour-level tournaments, use the technology in favor of human linespeople. Ruud didn’t appear to argue once the decision was made.

In the final set Fonseca moved quickly to a 5-1 lead before closing out the Norwegian at 12:27 a.m. Monday. He is the first Brazilian man to reach the French Open quarterfinals since Gustavo Kuerten in 2004. The three-time champion watched from a front-row seat and cheered throughout the match.

Fonseca acknowledged the pressure that followed his earlier win and said he focused on maintaining intensity point to point. “I knew the win against Djokovic was gonna put a lot of hype and a lot of imagination that I could be satisfied or whatever. I just tried to enter today very focused,” he said afterward. “Tried to breathe a lot and put intensity on every point. Played good, the way that I went. Offensive, went for the shots, so I’m very happy.”

He also reflected on Kuerten’s presence in the crowd during his on-court interview with Mats Wilander. “An idol for our sport and for our country. For his career, he is known for the way that he is and how humble he is,” Fonseca said. “He was here for my first time at Roland Garros, my first match as a junior, and it’s a pleasure to have him here. It’s a pleasure to win against a very tough opponent in front of him, so I’m just very happy.”

Fonseca is one of two 19-year-olds through to the last eight, along with Rafael Jodar.