After French Open-Aus – Julia Grabher: “I’m extremely disappointed”

Julia Grabher was tortured before her second round match at the French Open against Coco Gauff. The match between Daniel Altmaier and Jannik Sinner, which was scheduled in front of her on the Suzanne Lenglen court, was extremely long. Only after 5:26 hours was the German able to fix the sensation after defending two match points in the fourth set with a 6:7, 7:6, 1:6, 7:6, 7:5.

Then things got down to business for the woman from Dornbirn. However, anyone who believed that the Austrian would play free against last year’s American finalist as a clear outsider was wrong. Grabher acted like he was paralyzed in the first round, made some hair-raising mistakes and had to accept a 2:6 lead after just 34 minutes. Only in the second sentence did the 26-year-old shed some of her nervousness on the stage, which was unusually large for her and with sometimes strong winds, and showed at least a little of what she was really made of in the Parisian afterglow. Grabher, who had arrived with Rabat in the final, could not avert the defeat – after 68 minutes Gauff was happy about a 6:2, 6:3.

Despite the bitter defeat, a lot of positive things

“I am extremely disappointed. Not that I lost, but that I didn’t put what I can on the pitch. And so I didn’t give myself the chance to challenge her,” summarized Grabher, who admitted to being a little nervous. “But at the moment I haven’t found the reason for my performance.” Nevertheless, Austria’s number one, who will appear around position 60 in the ranking for the first time after Paris, can take a lot of positive things with him. “To all cases. I won a round in a Grand Slam for the first time and before that I was in a final on the WTA Tour for the first time. But I now have to learn from matches like the one against Gauff so that this doesn’t happen more or at least less often in the future,” says Grabher, who will play a challenger in Valencia the week after next. Then comes Wimbledon.

Ofner calls for veteran Fognini

This makes Sebastian Ofner the last red-white-red protagonist to hold up Austria’s colors in the individual competition at Roland Garros. The Styrian meets Fabio Fognini on Friday in the third game after 11 a.m. on Court 14. The first march into a Grand Slam round of 16 is definitely not an impossibility for Ofner – a lot will depend on the mood in which the Italian veteran presents himself. “I’m ready, I’ll just focus on myself and not be influenced by his possible antics,” says Ofner. Should the 27-year-old St. Mareiner succeed in the big coup, he would rise to about 80th place in the world rankings and would be Austria’s number one for the first time. Ofner has held this position in the ATP race for some time.