Tallon Griekspoor reached the second round at Roland Garros on Monday. After a mediocre start, the best Dutch tennis player fought his way to a victory over Marcos Giron in four sets: 6-4, 3-6, 4-6, and 5-7.
The 28-year-old Griekspoor had a mediocre start on court 8, which was packed with Dutch tennis fans around 7:00 PM. He immediately surrendered his first service game.
Under the watchful eye of Amsterdam NBA rookie Quinten Post, Griekspoor had to concede the first set to the two-year-older Giron. After that, the Dutch player started serving better and better and took the initiative.
Griekspoor used his first match point after 2 hours and 47 minutes and sent Giron home. Giron is number 43 in the world and is only eight places lower in the world rankings than Griekspoor.
In the second round, Griekspoor will face Canadian Gabriel Diallo, who surprisingly won against Argentinian clay specialist Francisco Cerundolo earlier in the day. He did so convincingly: it was 3-0 in sets.
Griekspoor recently broke up with coach
In the run-up to Roland Garros, Griekspoor mainly talked about the break-up with his coach Dennis Sporrel. The two parted ways after the Masters tournament in Rome at the beginning of this month. Griekspoor and Sporrel only worked together for three months.
In the period before that, Griekspoor also had an unsuccessful collaboration with Xavier Malisse, who had to leave after a trial period of ten days. Before that, he worked with Belgian coach Kristof Vliegen for two years.
Now Griekspoor is doing it alone for a while, with only his physiotherapist Sebastian Pisano by his side. His brother Scott Elt is his occasional coach in Paris.
Griekspoor achieved his best performance ever at Roland Garros last year by reaching the third round. In it, he lost to Alexander Zverev. His second round match against Diallo is most likely next Wednesday.