Mensik recovers from a first-set bagel to upset De Minaur and reach the Roland-Garros round of 16

Jakub Mensik (No 26), 20, two days after collapsing on Court 12, recovered from a 6-0 first-set bagel to beat eighth seed Alex de Minaur 0-6, 6-2, 6-2, 6-3. Rublev next.

Jakub Mensik, Roland-Garros 2026 | ©

Tennis Majors

May 29, 2026

Roland Garros •Third round • Completed

See draw

A. De MinaurvsJ. Mensik

Jakub Mensik, the 20-year-old Czech 26th seed who had been carried off Court 12 two days earlier after a four-hour-and-41-minute second-round contest, beat eighth seed Alex de Minaur 0-6, 6-2, 6-2, 6-3 on Friday evening to reach the round of 16 at Roland-Garros for the first time – and to produce a match shape that has not been seen at a Grand Slam in six years.

He is the first man since Lorenzo Giustino at Roland-Garros 2020 to win a Grand Slam match after losing the opening set 6-0. Giustino, that night, took 18-16 in the fifth over Corentin Moutet. Mensik’s was a tidier comeback, three sets in a row without a tie-break required, but the shape of it – a complete first set won, the rest of the match completely lost – was equally rare.

The opening 27 minutes had looked, from the outside, like the version of the contest the form lines pointed to. De Minaur, the 27-year-old Australian who had played fewer than two hours of competitive tennis to reach the third round – a 6-4, 6-4, 6-2 win over Toby Samuel in the first, a walkover from Alexander Blockx in the second – was fresh, mobile, and dictating from the baseline.

Mensik rushed to the net

Mensik, two days removed from collapsing on the clay against Mariano Navone, was stiff and slow on the slide. He won three games’ worth of points in the first set, but no games. From 0-6 down, he found something.

The tactical switch was the net. Mensik came forward 41 times across the match and won 33 of those points, an 80 per cent conversion rate that turned every short ball De Minaur left into a closing exchange. He broke seven times in 14 chances.

De Minaur, who finished with 21 winners to Mensik’s 33, was made to play more rallies as the match went on, and lost his timing as Mensik’s came back. The Czech took the second set 6-2 in 30 minutes, the third 6-2 in another 32, and the fourth 6-3 to close it out – three sets won in a row against a top-10 player by a player who, on Wednesday evening, could not stand.

It is the 10th top-10 win of Mensik’s career, his first against De Minaur in four meetings, and his second Grand Slam round of 16 of 2026 after the Australian Open in January. He will face Andrey Rublev, the 11th seed who became the first man through to the fourth round earlier on Friday.