Alexander Zverev advanced to the third round of the 2023 Roland Garros after besting Alex Molcan in three sets.
Previously, a highly-anticipated match between Holger Rune and Gael Monfils was scheduled to be played as the last on the Court Philippe-Chatrier. But after the Frenchman withdrew from the tournament, the match had to be replaced.
Many maybe expected tournament organizers to put a WTA match as a replacement to calm voices that demand more women's matches in the night sessions. But organizers added fuel to the fire, opting for another ATP match.
And that was the meeting between the tall German and talented Slovak, coached by the former coach of Novak Djokovic, Marian Vajda. The two never met before and so fans surely expected an interesting match.
But that wasn't really the case and the match only added to the talks about including women's singles match. The first set was probably the closest, but that was also decided early on as Zverev broke in the first game of the match.
Thanks to his accurate serves, the German then controlled the reminder of the set, eventually winning it 6-4 to establish the dominance on Court Philippe-Chatrier.
Yet, the next two sets were even more dominant by the last year's semifinalist. He broke the Slovak player twice in the second set and three times in the third, while avoiding a break himself, to win the match 6-4, 6-2, 6-1 in an hour and 59 minutes.
And it was the not really entertaining part of the match that started the talks about the scheduling again. Many argued that many WTA matches would last longer than that if the time is an excuse that the organizers want to use and the schedule for Friday also didn't help as Carlos Alcaraz will play against Denis Shapovalov in the last match of the day.
But that's probably something that doesn't bother Zverev as he surely wants to focus on his tennis. In the next round, he will take on the 12th-seeded Frances Tiafoe and if he wins, he'll want to take advantage of the fact that the eighth-seeded Jannik Sinner was eliminated and that he may avoid the talented Italian.
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