Stat of the Day: Gael Monfils battles to first tour-level win of injury comeback at Roland Garros

Gael Monfils lit up Court Philippe Chatrier like only he knows how on Tuesday night, clawing back from a fourth-set blow-out and a 4-0 deficit in the fifth set to outlast Sebastian Baez, 3-6, 6-3, 7-5, 1-6, 7-5, in a match that ended at 12:18am on Wednesday morning.

It was his first tour-level win since August 10th, 2022—exactly 294 days ago—when he defeated Maxime Cressy, 7-6 (10), 7-6 (6), in the second round of the Masters 1000 event in Canada.

The day after that win over Cressy, Monfils suffered a plantar fascia rupture in his right foot during his third-round match against Jack Draper, retiring from that match and being off the tour for the next seven months. He returned to action in early March of this year, but went 0-4 in his first four tour-level matches back with first-round exits at Indian Wells, Miami, Banja Luka and Lyon last week.

And he almost fell to 0-5 on Tuesday night, as not only did Baez build a 4-0 lead in the deciding set, he even had a break point for a 5-0 lead with Monfils serving at 0-4, 30-40. But the Frenchman held and eventually got it back to 4-all—then, after getting broken again in the next game, Monfils broke back again to even things up at 5-all.

Monfils then held for 6-5 and broke one last time to close out an emotional win—in which he overcame cramping, too. He sealed it with one last backhand passing shot winner on match point.

It was also Monfils’ first win at a Major in 493 days, since his fourth-round win over Miomir Kecmanovic at the 2022 Australian Open—he then fell to Matteo Berrettini in the quarterfinals there, and had actually missed every Grand Slam since then with foot injuries, until making his major comeback in Paris on Tuesday night.

More to come…