Landaluce runs out of epic in Paris after six hours against the sensation Cerúndolo

The Spanish tennis player Martín Landaluce said goodbye to Roland Garros this Saturday in the third round by falling in five sets (6-4, 6-7(7), 7-6(4), 6-7(4), 7-6(8)) with the Argentine Juan Manuel Cerúndolo, a six-hour duel that elevated Jannik Sinner’s executioner.

Landaluce, who won his first two Grand Slam victories in Paris, said goodbye with a bitter defeat after fighting for six hours to reach the round of 16. The Madrid native forced the fifth set and equality reached one more tie-break, the fourth of the afternoon after the initial 6-4, where Cerúndolo reaffirmed himself as a sensation in this French Open without favorites.

The Argentine had just defeated number one Sinner, coming back from two sets down and 1-5 in the third, and showed against the Spaniard that he also knows how to suffer. Landaluce, who had won two epic five-set matches, had a third victory in a Cerúndolo who had a set point in the second, but who began to fear the Spaniard with that elusive tie-break.

In the third, however, the Argentine was more forceful in that decisive moment that once again decided the set, but the response of the Madrid native, who already showed signs of his good feelings on land with the quarterfinals in Rome, was to force the fifth set after a very close set. That fifth, already after five hours of play, also had an exchange of breaks, and a sudden death that was even more agonizing.

Juan Manuel Cerúndolo took it upon himself to stop Landaluce who, at 20 years old, left injured but proud of a projection that never stops looking upward. The Argentine, who has become a player to watch in a tournament without Carlos Alcaraz, Sinner or Novak Djokovic, met in the round of 16 with the Italian Matteo Berrettini, who saved two match points in the fifth set against the Argentine Francisco Comesaña (7-6(3), 5-7, 7-6(4), 6-4, 7-6(13).