Rather lose 6-0, 6-0 than retire: Casper Ruud’s proud Roland-Garros comeback
Casper Ruud faced extreme heat and cramps, losing a set 6-0 against Roman Safiullin at Roland-Garros. Despite feeling like a “zombie,” he refused to retire, drawing inspiration from other champions to stage a remarkable five-set comeback. A truly proud victory.
Casper Ruud, Roland-Garros 2026 | © Federico Pestellini/Shutterstock/SIPA
There is a passage in Casper Ruud’s chat with the reporters from Monday night, after his five-set first-round win over Roman Safiullin, where the Norwegian describes losing eight games in a row without really moving. “I just told myself,” he said, “I’d rather lose 6-0, 6-0, but maybe he’s also struggling.”
That sentence is the spine of what may turn out to be the strangest match of Roland-Garros 2026’s first week. Ruud beat Safiullin 6-2, 7-6, 5-7, 0-6, 6-2, on a day when the on-court temperature touched 33°C and the heat became, in his own words, the only thing in the building.
At some point he felt so low that Ruud was already mentally following the rest of the fortnight from home. “At times in the fourth I was thinking, ‘I have to book the flight home tomorrow, and I’ll be watching from home on the sofa the next two weeks’. Luckily, that’s not the case.”
Inspired by Champions
He did not retire. He had decided, somewhere around 5-all in the third set, that retiring was off the table, because losing on his feet was preferable to leaving on a stretcher and because he knows that champion chose their destiny.
“I thought of Jannik and Carlos this year at Australia,” he said. “Jannik, in particular, when he was struggling in the heat. Then it cooled off with the roof closing, and he was able to regain energy. A little bit the same with Carlos semifinal with Sascha. He looked pretty dead for a while and then somehow regained and came back in the fifth. There are some things you think out there, and today that worked for me.”
The cramps started at 3-1 in the third set, with the standard tennis-player tendency in the calves. He had a service break in hand. He went up 5-2, then 5-3, 40-Love, three match points in his pocket, and put five first serves in a row in the box. And Safiullin played “five good points ” in the Norwegian’s words. Ruud missed a forehand winner on Safiullin’s break point.
“The toughest service break I’ve experienced in a while,” he said. By the time he reached 5-all, the cramps had moved into a heat-stroke state. “I felt really dizzy, walking around like a zombie almost.”
The Wall and the Comeback
He lost the third 5-7. He lost the fourth 0-6, eleven straight games from 5-3 in the third to 0-1 in the fifth. During these games he barely moved. He has played long enough to know the secondary purpose of standing still on a tennis court: when you don’t move for twenty or thirty minutes, you can consume a little energy. He poured ice and cold water over himself. He waited.
At one point, while Safiullin’s hip began to seize and the Russian called the physio, Ruud sat on the bench with an ice towel on his head, watching the man across the net break down and registering it as a possibility. The five-minute heat break came after the fourth set.
“Luckily, that’s in the rule book,” Ruud said. He left the court for a cooled room, brought ice towels, and started the fifth set with his pulse and body temperature lower than they had been since 3-1 in the third. He told himself: “Either I lose 6-0 or something can happen.”
Safiullin, whose hip was now visibly bothering his serve, lost power. Ruud rebuilt the match from a baseline he no longer had to win from the back of the court, only had to be present for. He won 6-2. “Both physically and mentally it feels kind of as a proud win.” Ruud plays Hamad Medjedović next. The forecast for the rest of the week is more of the same.
