The night-session crowd at Roland Garros will be coming out to see Gael Monfils on Thursday, when he goes up against Lorenzo Musetti. A jam-packed schedule also includes Holger Rune vs. Flavio Cobolli.
Gael Monfils vs. (30) Lorenzo Musetti
Monfils played an absolute circus of a match in the French Open first round last spring and was unable to play two days later (withdrew against Holger Rune). The 37th-ranked Frenchman’s 2024 opener against Thiago Seyboth Wild wasn’t as physically taxing as the 2023 thriller against Sebastian Baez, but it also wasn’t easy (6-2, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4) and Monfils is 37 years old with a slew of injuries in his past.
He will have to be 100 percent if he wants to advance again on Thursday night, because Musetti represents a very tough test on clay. The 30th-ranked Italian has reached the fourth round at Roland Garros twice and pushed Novak Djokovic to five sets in 2021. Although the 2024 campaign has not been a good one for Musetti, he probably built some confidence with a 6-3, 6-3, 7-5 thrashing of Daniel Elahi Galan on Monday. Monfils won the only previous meeting between the two players 7-6(2), 6-4 three years ago in Vienna, but that was on an indoor hard court. There is obviously a chance that Monfils comes to play both mentally and physically in front of the home crowd, but at this point in their respective careers Musetti is the more reliable player.
Pick: Musetti in 3
Flavio Cobolli vs. (13) Holger Rune
Rune is thought to have the makings of a future French Open champion; with the 2024 title relatively up for grabs, that time could be now. Unfortunately for the 13th-ranked Dane, he has been in far from spectacular form pretty much ever since leaving Wimbledon last summer following a quarterfinal performance. Rune most recently lost to Jan-Lennard Struff 6-2, 6-0 in the Munich semis, to Tallon Griekspoor in the Madrid third round, and to Sebastian Baez in the Rome third round.
The 21-year-old erased Dan Evans 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 on Tuesday, but the clay-court competition gets considerably more difficult with Cobolli on the other side of the net. The 22-year-old Italian has been one of the tour’s breakout stars in 2024, with 16 of his 22 ATP-level wins coming this season. Cobolli is coming off a semifinal run in Geneva and he scored a very good win over 2023 NextGen ATP Finals champion Hamad Medjedovic in the French Open first round. It looks like the time is right for the world No. 53 to really have his coming out party on tour.
Pick: Cobolli in 5