Casper Ruud survived a punishing physical test in his Roland Garros opening match, battling dizziness and a rising body temperature to edge Roman Safiullin in five sets. The two-time finalist reached match point only to see the momentum shift as cramps and breathlessness took hold.

“It started kind of sneaking up on me towards the middle of the third set,” he said. “I think when I broke him to 3-1, I started feeling a tiny bit of tendency of cramp in my calves, and I was thinking, ‘Oh, shoot, here we go.’” Up two sets and 5-2, Ruud then dropped 11 straight games and was barely moving.

“Physically, I’m proud because I never really gave in. I didn’t give up.”

At 5-3, 40-15 on Safiullin’s serve, Ruud thought the match was all but done. A sequence of five first serves in a row followed by five strong points from Safiullin left Ruud missing a forehand winner at a crucial break point. Later in the fourth set Safiullin took a medical timeout for treatment to his lower abdomen, a stoppage that, together with the break before the fifth set, gave Ruud time to recover enough to fight back.

Ruud ultimately prevailed 6-2, 7-6 (5), 5-7, 0-6, 6-2, holding on to claim a hard-earned victory. The 28-year-old Oslo native, seeded 15th, noted he drew encouragement from earlier matches this season at Australia: “I also thought of Jannik and Carlos this year at Australia when Jannik, in particular, was struggling in the heat. Then it cooled off with the roof closing, and he was able to regain energy,” recalled Ruud. “A little bit the same with Carlos’ semifinal with Sascha. He looked pretty dead for a while and then lost third and fourth, and then somehow regained and came back in the fifth.”

Recovery will be vital as temperatures are expected to stay above 90 throughout the first week. In the second round the 15th seed meets Hamad Medjedovic.

On the opening day of Roland Garros the image that captured attention was simple: Jannik Sinner practicing in a plain white T-shirt that read, “Winning Starts With Training.” The message, literal and unadorned, is also the throughline of Sinner’s recent evolution on clay.

The world No. 1 arrives at Roland Garros this year seeking his first title at the event. Earlier this spring, when he won the Internazionali BNL d’Italia, Sinner joined Rafael Nadal as the only player to have swept all three spring Masters 1000 titles. That achievement sits alongside a career that once produced only sporadic clay success.

Sinner’s first clay title came at an M25 in early 2019 at Santa Margherita Di Pula when he was ranked No. 322. His next clay triumph would not arrive until the ATP 250 in Umag three years later, where the beaten finalist was a young Carlos Alcaraz. Between those milestones and this season, clay proved a mixed arena: losses to Holger Rune (Monte Carlo, semifinals), Franciso Cerundolo (Rome, fourth round) and Daniel Altmaier (Roland Garros, second round) were followed by 2024 setbacks to Stefanos Tsitsipas (Monte Carlo semifinals), a hip injury that forced a Madrid walkover to Felix Auger-Aliassime, and defeat by Alcaraz in the Roland Garros semifinals.

A doping suspension interrupted the 2025 clay season and cost Sinner live match time, but it also became an unintended reset. He used the break to focus on clay-specific work and returned in Rome, where he reached the final before losing to Alcaraz. “It was my first big final on clay,” he said. “We worked a lot for that.”

Sinner has described the gap as a loss of match “feedback”: “I didn’t know exactly how I was playing, if the shots were on the right pace or not, if I’m moving well or not, many things,” he said. The team compared early Monte Carlo data with Rome performances to get “a big picture” template for improvement. As he put it in Monte Carlo this year, “I never won anything big on this surface. So, I’m looking forward to it, trying to put myself in the position hopefully, and then we’ll see.”

Training, coach Simone Vagnozzi and a willingness to leave comfort zones have reshaped Sinner’s clay game. “I take my confidence from training, not tournaments.” He has been candid about the work: “You arrive to a point when you play against Carlos where you have to go out of your comfort zone. So I’m going to aim to, you know, [do that]. . Maybe even lose some matches from now on, but trying to do some changes, you know, trying to be a bit more unpredictable as a player.” Off court he acknowledges perception: “I feel like the fans don’t know how I am as a person [because] I’m very serious on the court.” After his Rome breakthrough he reflected, “I cannot compare this to any other tournament,” he said. “There is here that extra pressure, extra hunger and the feeling [desire] to play the best possible tennis. The whole tournament was very challenging, but also so beautiful at the same time. So I just love this tournament. It has so much more history [for Italians] than the ATP Finals in Turin,” an event Sinner also won on home soil.

Stan Wawrinka closed his long run at Roland Garros with a four-set defeat to lucky loser Jesper de Jong, going down 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4. The 41-year-old’s final appearance at the clay major concluded with an on-court ceremony that acknowledged a career threaded through this event.

De Jong, who gained entry as a lucky loser after Arthur Fils withdrew, moves into the second round. Late in the match Wawrinka produced one last surge of his trademark power and created a break point when de Jong served for the match, but he was unable to convert. At one point he went to the ground as the sun towered over Court Simonne-Mathieu.

Wawrinka won his second of three major titles at Roland Garros 11 years ago and was the 2017 runner-up. With retirement scheduled to be capped later this season in Basel, he finishes his Roland Garros record with 46 match wins at the clay-court major.

After the match a ceremony on court featured congratulatory messages from Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic. Wawrinka’s speech was emotional and his voice cracked early, but he maintained his composure. He was presented a commemorative gift by Gilles Moretton, president of the French Tennis Federation, and tournament director Amélie Mauresmo.

Wawrinka made a final circuit of the court to acknowledge the packed house before exiting. The match and the tribute provided a bookend to more than two decades of appearances at the tournament, and offered a final, public farewell at the clay major where he enjoyed some of his greatest success.