40 minutes of dreaming, and a brutal return to earth. Corentin Moutet experienced an evening with two faces on Sunday, for his first round of 16 at Roland-Garros. The Frenchman pocketed the first set before giving up and logically giving in against Jannik Sinner, 2nd player in the world (2-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-1, in 2h41′). It is thus the Italian who will meet the Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov on Tuesday, seeded number 10 in the tournament, for a place in the last four.
Moutet saw the door open after an idyllic first round. His coach Petar Popovic had underlined the importance of the start to ignite the Philippe-Chatrier court and raise doubts about Sinner, who arrived in Paris without any reference to his physical condition. The Parisian could not apply his coach’s plan better, since he led 5-0 after around twenty minutes and had already broken his opponent three times, who had only lost his engagement twice since entering the fray. Moutet was everywhere and Sinner nowhere, absent, technically (14 unforced errors) and physically.
The Frenchman’s state of grace lasted until his break at the start of the second set, after a 27-shot exchange at the end of which he looked at the audience to better enjoy the ovation. Above all, the winner of the last Australian Open, confronted with the infernal variations of Moutet for the first time in his career, raised his level of play and began to move better, as if he needed of just half an hour to adjust to his opponent and unlock the right hip which was creaking in the weeks before Roland-Garros.
The audience woke up in the 4th set
His serve became lethal again (20 points lost on his engagement in the last three sets, 5 aces and 12 winning serves), he arrived on time following Moutet’s antics, covered his ground brilliantly and ended up reversing the balance of power. The 79th player in the world found himself without a solution, apart from series of forehands which involved enormous risk-taking. No matter how hard he fought, against Sinner and against himself, not to explode, he could not resist against the solidity of the Italian, whose forehand power (36 of his 40 winning shots on this side ) and accuracy were a disaster.
So the games went by, without even his spoon serves breaking the opposing rhythm. In the third and fourth sets, Moutet was broken from the start and chasing the score took a toll on his head and his legs. The public at Chatrier, until now timid, understood that they held one of the keys to making the match last and turned up the sound in the middle of the fourth set, shouted to tip into irrationality, launched an interminable ola that the chair umpire could no longer stop. “Thank you, it was extraordinary,” he finally said, to coax this audience into a frenzy.
Because of madness, there were no more on the field and Moutet felt that he was hitting a wall. Hence his growing frustration (44 unforced errors, 7 missed drop shots for 4 winners) and a racket increasingly close to ending up in the scrapyard. A process that a foot fault reported on a spoon serve ended. That did not prevent the Frenchman, beaten for the twelfth time in as many confrontations with a member of the Top 10, from receiving a last deserved ovation as he left the field, before leaving Porte d’Auteuil, where he will return this summer for the Olympic Games.
Sinner will play his second quarter-final at Roland Garros on Tuesday, the first since 2020, and continues to send reassuring signals, far from the concern perceived in recent weeks. Enough to make him a real candidate for final victory next Sunday.
