French Open Day 6 - Djokovic downed as Fonseca comes of age
The Tennis Podcast
David Law
4.5 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 30 May 2026
⏱️ 84 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At the end of another extraordinary day at this year’s French Open, Catherine, David and Matt are together at Tennis Podcast Towers in Paris to discuss an historically wide-open men’s tournament following Joao Fonseca’s incredible win over Novak Djokovic.
Part one - Men’s draw. How did Fonseca mount his comeback from two sets down against Djokovic? What did it feel like in the stadium? And what does this mean for both players and the rest of this tournament? Elsewhere, we cover Casper Ruud saving match points to survive Tommy Paul by the skin of his teeth, a gritty win for Rafael Jodar, and Jakub Mensik’s remarkable physical revival.
Part two - Women’s draw (50:38). Marta Kostyuk vs Iga Swiatek is on and we’re excited. Can Kostyuk take advantage of being the underdog? We also chat about Jim Teichmann’s upset win over Karolina Muchova, her noisy fan club, and the way she’s returned to the sport after taking a break from it last year. Plus, Sorana Cirstea wins 6-0 6-0, Belinda Bencic and Elina Svitolina have set up a fourth round clash, and more players have spoken out about the hazards at the back of the court after Zeynep Sonmez’s fall.
Part three - A look ahead to the Day 7 Order of Play and the FFT’s statement about sexist remarks made by Adolfo Daniel Vallejo (1:11:01).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the tennis podcast coming to you from Paris midway through what is developing into one of the craziest major tournaments in our lifetime, |
| 0:23.3 | certainly on the men's side, at least. |
| 0:26.1 | With the loss of Novak Djokovic today, we are guaranteed to arrive in the second week of the tournament |
| 0:33.6 | with no grand slam winners in the draw for the first time since the start of the |
| 0:40.8 | open era. |
| 0:41.8 | So someone is becoming a major champion for the first time a week on Sunday. |
| 0:48.3 | And that is thanks to 19-year-old Joel Fonseca, who this evening recovered from two sets to love down |
| 0:57.1 | to defeat the 24-time major champion Novak Djokovic 4-6-4-6-6-3-7-5-75 in four hours and 53 minutes, a quintessential coming of age, changing of the guard. |
| 1:15.8 | Pick your cliche, quite frankly. |
| 1:18.3 | Did this match, Matt Roberts, make you feel the way an epic grand slam upset is supposed to feel? |
| 1:26.7 | Was it payback for yesterday and the strange sensation |
| 1:30.7 | we were all left with after Yannick Sinner's shock five set defeat? Well, first of all, |
| 1:37.1 | I just got chills, you reading out that intro and that point about we're going to have a new major champion, you know, that |
| 1:45.7 | that's been kind of the defining feature of men's tennis, hasn't it? Who is going to be the |
| 1:50.5 | next first time champion? And we're going to, we're going to find out. It is wild. And yeah, |
| 1:56.4 | this match absolutely gave me everything I'm looking for from an upset. You know, from the moment I |
| 2:03.9 | stepped on to court Philippe Chattray at the start of the third set and was just hit with this |
| 2:10.4 | wall of noise from the Brazilian fans and this explosion of color from the Brazilian fans and their yellow shirts, |
| 2:19.8 | it already felt very, very different to yesterday and Yanik Sinner's defeat. |
| 2:26.2 | And yeah, what unfolded over the next few hours, I didn't know it was going to be hours, |
| 2:31.4 | when I got up there, had echoes of Al-Krasseena last year |
| 2:36.8 | in terms of the arc of the match coming from two sets down, the drama, the length |
... |
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