Week one of Roland Garros 2026 did not follow the script. By the end of the third round, the three players who had dominated men’s tennis for the past two years were all gone. Jannik Sinner, the world number one, lost in the second round on 28 May. Carlos Alcaraz, who arrived as one of the leading men’s contenders, exited in the third round. And on Friday 30 May, Novak Djokovic, a three-time champion here, lost to 19-year-old Brazilian João Fonseca in five sets, 4-6, 4-6, 6-3, 7-5, 7-5.
No Sinner. No Djokovic. No Alcaraz. The men’s quarter-finals begin without any of them.
On the women’s side, defending champion Coco Gauff lost in the third round to Anastasia Potapova, 4-6, 7-6, 6-4. The women’s draw is cleaner, with a clear favourite in world number one Aryna Sabalenka. The men’s draw is anything but.
Here is what to watch in week two.
The men’s draw: genuinely open
The fourth round of the men’s draw includes João Fonseca, Matteo Berrettini, Flavio Cobolli, Alejandro Tabilo, Juan Manuel Cerundolo, and Zachary Svajda, among others. Several of these players have not previously reached a Grand Slam quarter-final. None of them has won a major.
Fonseca is the name everyone is talking about. His week one run involved two five-set comebacks from two sets down in consecutive matches, including the win over Djokovic. At 19, he has the physical condition and the nerve to compete at this level. Whether he can win three more matches on clay against this kind of competition is an open question. But he has earned the right to be taken seriously.
Berrettini has Grand Slam final experience, having reached the Wimbledon final in 2021. He is comfortable on clay and on form. Tabilo, Cobolli, Cerundolo and Svajda all reached this stage on merit. Any of them can beat the others on a good day.
The men’s quarter-final draw, confirmed on 2 June, will be the first real signal of who has a clear path. Until then, the honest answer is that the modelling for this side of the draw has to be done from scratch.
Sabalenka and the women’s draw
Aryna Sabalenka has been the most dominant player in the women’s draw through three rounds. She beat Kasatkina 6-0, 7-5 in the third round, dropping just five games. She faces Naomi Osaka in the fourth round today, 1 June.
Osaka’s return to Grand Slam form has been one of the stories of this fortnight. She beat Jovic 7-6, 3-6, 6-4 in her third-round match and has competed well enough to reach this stage. Sabalenka is the clear favourite for Monday’s match, but Osaka has shown the ability to win close sets under pressure.
Potapova, who beat Gauff in the third round, moves through to her fourth round having taken down the defending champion. Her draw gets harder from here.
The women’s semi-finals are on 4 June. Court Philippe-Chatrier will also host a ceremony for Caroline Garcia on the same day, a separate occasion for the home crowd.
The schedule
The key dates for week two:
- Quarter-finals: Tuesday 2 and Wednesday 3 June
- Women’s semi-finals: Thursday 4 June
- Men’s semi-finals: Friday 5 June
- Women’s final: Saturday 6 June
- Men’s final: Sunday 7 June
The fourth round is today, Monday 1 June. Quarter-final matchups will be confirmed once those results are known.
What the data tells us
The honest framing for this week is uncertainty. The players who typically anchor the pre-tournament probability models are gone from the men’s draw. That does not mean the remaining players are weak. It means the historical data for these match-ups at this stage is thinner.
Sabalenka’s performance numbers through the women’s draw suggest she is in form. Her win over Kasatkina, dropping just five games, was controlled. The women’s market is easier to analyse this week than the men’s.
For traders, that asymmetry matters. A draw with a clear favourite on one side and genuine uncertainty on the other produces different value opportunities at different stages. The quarter-finals on Tuesday and Wednesday will tell us a great deal about which men have the game to compete across best-of-five on clay in week two conditions.
We will cover each quarter-final in dedicated match previews as the draw becomes clear.
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