Jodar comes back from two sets to one down to reach his first Grand Slam round of 16
Rafael Jodar (No 27), 19, came back from two sets to one down to beat Alex Michelsen 7-6(2), 6-7(5), 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 in 4h 16min on Simonne-Mathieu — his first Grand Slam round of 16. Ranked outside the world’s top 700 a year ago, the Spaniard is now world No. 29.
Rafael Jodar, Roland-Garros 2026 | © Ch. Caillaud / PsNewz
Rafael Jodar, the 19-year-old Spaniard and 27th seed, came back from two sets to one down to beat American Alex Michelsen 7-6(2), 6-7(5), 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 in four hours and 16 minutes on Court Simonne-Mathieu on Friday – the longest match of his short career, and the one that sent him through to the round of 16 of a Grand Slam for the first time.
“It was a really tough match, especially at the end of the second set, and the beginning of the third, but I knew the match was still very long.”, Jodar said after the match. “When I lost the third set, I knew that if I gave my best I had chances, and that’s what I did. A match isn’t over until you finish the last point – that was my mentality during the fourth and fifth sets.”
three breaks in the fifth
The fifth set held its own narrative. Jodar broke Michelsen at the start of it to lead 1-0, but the American levelled it back to 3-3. From there the Spaniard found another gear, breaking twice in the final three games – for 4-3, and again to close out the set 6-3. Jodar is now 2-0 in five-set matches in his career.
“I learn a lot from a match like this”, he added. “There hasn’t been a match in my career so far where I was 2-1 down. I keep the work and everything I left on the court – not just in the fourth and fifth sets, but right from the start.“
The Madrid-born teenager, who was outside the world’s top 700 a year ago and is now world No. 29, has put together a 2026 season that has carried him onto every kind of stage. He arrived in Paris off a Marrakech title and back-to-back quarter-finals at the Masters 1000s in Madrid and Rome – in Madrid, his run included a 6-3, 6-1 dismantling of then-world No. 8 Alex de Minaur, the biggest win of his life so far.
He has now won 18 of his last 21 matches, and is 18-3 on clay this season. The straight-sets dismissal of Aleksandar Kovacevic in the first round, the four-set survival of James Duckworth through cramping conditions in the second, and now the five-set survival of Michelsen — three different versions of the same answer.
The reward is an all-Spanish round of 16 against Pablo Carreño Busta, the 34-year-old who beat Argentina’s Thiago Agustín Tirante in four earlier on Friday.
