2026 French Open Quarterfinals: Sabalenka's Shock Collapse and More
6/4/20261 hr 3 min
Ben and Tumaini discuss the eight quarterfinals played at Roland Garros and the semifinals that are now set up, starting with the men and going in reverse chronological order.
We start with Arnaldi winning The Battle Of The Matteos, setting up an all-Italian semifinal against Flavio Cobolli after Cobolli handed Felix Auger-Aliassime a bitter defeat. On the bottom half, we discuss Jakub Mensik stepping up against Joao Fonseca, and if anyone can stop heavy favorite Alexander Zverev, who has breezed through a pretty soft draw.
On the women's side, we start with the shocking loss of No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, who seemed to be in full control before losing 12 of the last 13 games against Diana Shnaider to crash out. There were echoes of last year's defeat to Gauff, but this year's press conference was more good humored.
We then discuss the surprise run of Maja Chwalinska and the strong Kostyuk-Andreeva semifinal on the bottom half.
Lastly, we get into the news that the Serena comeback is now official, even if we really have no idea what to expect yet as Serena hasn't set any expectations yet.
A reminder that is still a 15% discount on Bounces subscriptions during this French Open!
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsTumaini Carayol· Host0:00
Miss Ostapenko has no challenges remaining Welcome to No Challenges Remaining.
Ben Rothenberg· Host0:04
I'm Ben Rothenberg of Bounces, joined by Tumaini Carayol of The Guardian, The Guardian's tennis correspondent. He's also, of course, NCR's Spain and Sub-Saharan Africa correspondent. Tumaini, how are you doing? As we end the quarterfinals and head into the semifinals, how are you feeling, just wellness check for you at this stage of the tournament?
Tumaini Carayol· Host0:24
Well, f- firstly, I'm, I'm happy that we're podcasting at 12:30 AM instead of- Three, three hours earlier than last time [laughs] Yes, correct. That, that's a good thing. Um, it's been a crazy, crazy tournament. S- so much going on, so many upsets, s- off-court dramas, boycotts. Remember those boycotts?
Ben Rothenberg· Host0:43
Mm-hmm.
Tumaini Carayol· Host0:43
Um, yeah, so I'm, I'm f- I'm feeling good still. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm worn down. I'm, I'm, I'm as worn as M- Matteo Arnaldi, but we're, we're still going strong.
Ben Rothenberg· Host0:53
And Mate- Mater- Matteo Arn- Mar- gosh, I can't talk at even 12:30. Matteo Arnaldi is still in this tournament.
Tumaini Carayol· Host0:59
He is, yep.
Ben Rothenberg· Host1:00
So- Mm-hmm ... we are gonna talk about him, but some of the men first. Um, actually, let's do it in reverse order. Let's just talk about the most recent match, which was Matteo Arnaldi, uh, winning 7-5, 5-2 retired against the other Matteo, Matteo Berrettini, who had a, a hip issue. Um, I gotta say, if one- you told me one of them was gonna be physically flagging in this match, I would've thought it was Arnaldi because Arnaldi spent more time on court to get to the quarterfinals than anyone in Grand Slam history.
Tumaini Carayol· Host1:26
By over two hours?
Ben Rothenberg· Host1:27
By over two hours, like more than 17 hours, so many marathons,