Roland Garros - June 4

As we're heading towards the end of the tournament, matches are not so many per day now, which means we can watch almost all the matches. So far I can say the French Open is the most interesting tournament of the year. We had most of the top players in the tournament and many young, talented players as well, some coming from qualifiers.

Yesterday was the first day of the third round with a lot of interesting matches, of which I'd like to write about a few.

Stefanos Tsitsipas vs John Isner

Finally I got see Isner playing with none other that the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas. I knew the match will be an epic one and I was right. John Isner is a legend but not like Federer and/or Djokovic. He's a legend in a different way. He doesn't have a bunch of Grand Slam titles, but has a bunch of other impressive records.

John Robert Isner (born April 26, 1985) is an American professional tennis player. He has been ranked as high as No. 8 in men's singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP).
Considered one of the best servers ever to play on the ATP Tour, Isner achieved his career-high singles ranking in July 2018 by virtue of his maiden Masters 1000 crown at the 2018 Miami Open and a semifinals appearance at the 2018 Wimbledon Championships. He has also twice reached the quarterfinals at the US Open in 2011 and 2018, the latter of which helped qualify him for his first ATP Finals appearance later that year. He currently has the second-most aces in the history of the ATP Tour, having served over 12,000 aces. At the 2010 Wimbledon Championships, he played the longest professional tennis match in history, defeating Nicolas Mahut in a total of 11 hours and 5 minutes, played over the course of three days. Isner currently holds the record for hitting the ATP's fastest "official" serve ever and third-fastest on record in tennis at 157.2 mph or 253 km/h during his first-round 2016 Davis Cup match. source

Even though I like Federer, Djokovic and a bunch of other players, I believe Isner is the best from technical point of view. What he does on the court, no one can at the moment.

Tsitsipas has no difficulty defeating almost every player, but Isner is a different story. Isner is 2.05m tall, therefore has a different technique than the others. He's looking for short points, by doing aces right at the beginning, finding the best possible angle that his opponent can't get to in time and so on. We're used to long games but Isner is not one to favor this type of tennis.

Tsitsipas was in real difficulty at the beginning. The first set was a nightmare for him. He lost and got so angry and frustrated that started speaking in Greek and shouting. I've never seen him this frustrated honestly. His plan was disrupted, he faced an player with a very different technique and felt he's not in control.

After losing the first set, he seemed to get back in control and tried to outsmart Isner. The third set go a little bit difficult and a tie-break was needed to decide te winner. Unfortunately Isner started to make mistakes and that costed him dearly. The last set was disappointing, although I know Isner did the best he could. Unfortunately the approximately ten year age difference means a lot in a tough match like this. Towards the end of the match Isner was done, it was visible with the naked eye. Those mistakes are inadmissible in a match like this.

Even though Isner lost, he's still my favorite player and I'm looking forward to see him playing in the next tournament.

I was glad to see Pablo Carreño Busta winning against Steve Johnson. He deserved to qualify to the next round, which could be his last match in Paris as he's going to meet Tsitsipas and winning against the Greek is difficult.

Daniil Medvedev also had a relatively easy job with Reilly Opelka, he only needed three sets to win.

Zverev and Garin are also qualified to the next round.

Garin is going to meet Medvedev, who hates clay and it's only now that he managed to get over his frustration on clay. Let's see if he can win against Garin, who's amazing.

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