“You see the draw. You see all the matches…”: Flavio Cobolli, the second-highest seed left in the top half of the draw, refuses to dream openly
One of the men best placed to win a Roland-Garros missing Sinner and Djokovic, Flavio Cobolli pointed the contender question back at the reporter who asked it – while admitting how hard it is not to look at the draw.
Flavio Cobolli, Roland-Garros 2026 | © Ch. Caillaud / PsNewz
Asked on Saturday whether he saw himself as a possible contender for the title, in a Roland-Garros draw whose top half has been emptied of Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic inside 48 hours, Flavio Cobolli answered with two words and a laugh.
“Ask him,” the Italian 10th seed said, gesturing at the journalist. The room laughed. “No, I’m joking.”
Cobolli gave a fuller answer of the same shape. “Of course I want to think match by match. That’s the way that I want to think this week. I know that there are many possibility to have a new Grand Slam champions, but I don’t want to think about this.” He had just reached the fourth round at Roland-Garros for the first time in his career, beating Learner Tien 6-2 6-2 6-3 on Court Philippe-Chatrier.
The arithmetic of the draw is the part he was being invited to acknowledge, and didn’t. Cobolli sits in the second quarter, behind Félix Auger-Aliassime – the only top-ten player left in the entire top half, seed No.4 – and the next seed above him in his own quarter, Daniil Medvedev, was knocked out in the first round by the Australian Adam Walton.
His fourth-round opponent will be Zachary Svajda, who defeated Francisco Cerundolo, and his eventual next opponent will Félix Auger-Aliassime (or Brandon Nakashima, or Moise Kouame, or Alejandro Tabilo, based on further results).
It’s not easy to stay match by match, but I try to do it
Cobolli was invited a second time to talk about it. “I know players always like to look match by match, but how do you do it when a tournament turns up like this? What do you go through between matches to stay focused only on the next match?”
“It’s not easy,” he said. “You see the draw. You see all the matches. So we have a lot of time to see the other matches, and it’s not easy to stay match by match, but I try to do it. The only thing that I know is that I won three matches, and I have to play the fourth. For sure it will be tough, and have to be ready to fight again,” he said. “So for now I’m thinking about the next one.”
A win would only lead to Cobolli’s second Grand Slam quarter final, and his first in Paris. His previous run at this level came last summer at Wimbledon.
