Holger Rune produced a sensational effort to down Stefanos Tsitsipas 7-5 3-6 6-3 6-4 at Roland Garros, reaching the quarterfinal.
It's hard to explain how big of an upset this is because on paper it's a pretty big one but broken down it's not so shocking as you might expect. Tsitsipas has been struggling mightily the entire set and generally, his level of play has been down overall this year. He only played a couple of really superb events and his clay game is far from last year's.
Rune on the other hand played a few clean matches smashing opponents rather easily. The Danish player has a good clay game overall but today's effort produced so many timely winners with many of them landing directly on the line. He had a good plan, attack and attack early. Avoid the forehand and play on the backhand. It worked but he was greatly helped by Tsitsipas.
The Greek player survived so far with his superb serve but today it was missing for large chunks of the match. He did not have many easy points after it and he was missing quite badly with his forehand at times. Rune had more winners in most of the sets and that was a big problem. Tsitsipas never quite looked as sharp in this match, to begin with and he showed very little emotion. He seemed quite zoned out for most of it.
Tsitsipas had a couple of break points at 5-4 to make it 5-5 but but Rune played bravely and he was able to close it out. Fantastic performance for the 19-year old.
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