On Saturday, Francisco Cerundolo was two sets down against Zachary Svajda, ranked 85th in the world and playing his first French Open main draw, when the Argentine lost the plot entirely. Cerundolo, lost and furious, sent his coach, Pablo Cuevas, out of the stadium mid-match.

The Uruguayan complied, walking off Court 14 having been asked to leave by the player he was there to support. It was not a quiet moment. “Sos horrible, boludo (You’re horrible, idiot),” Cerundolo had been heard muttering on the court, directing his rage at anyone within range. Once Cuevas left, Cerundolo appeared to loosen up, found something to play for and forced a fifth set. It was not enough. Svajda closed it out 6-3, 6-4, 3-6, 4-6, 6-3, and the 25th seed was eliminated.

This is not the first time Cerundolo and Cuevas have reached a breaking point together. In February 2025, at the Rio Open, a similar dynamic played out, only that time it was Cuevas who decided to leave the court. 

“Pablo told me to fight. I told him I couldn’t. He probably didn’t like that and he left,” Cerundolo said at the time. The roles were reversed in Paris. This time, it was Cerundolo who pulled the trigger. Whether or not Cuevas will continue in his position is now up for discussion. 

Francisco Cerundolo’s best performance at Roland Garros was the fourth round, which he achieved in both 2023 and 2024. He came into this year ranked 26th in the world with a career-high of No. 18 in May 2025 and was one of the more interesting Argentinean tales to emerge at an event where his younger brother Juan Manuel produced the upset of the tournament by beating world No. 1 Jannik Sinner in the second round. Francisco’s exit, against a player who had barely accumulated ten main draw matches this season before Paris, landed much harder in that context. 

What happened on Court 14 on Saturday did not exist in isolation. It was the second time in the space of a week that a Roland Garros match had been defined as much by what was happening in the player’s box as what was happening on the court. Earlier in the tournament, Alejandro Davidovich Fokina’s coach, Mariano Puerta, walked out of the tournament between the Spaniard’s first and second-round matches, flying to Miami without a face-to-face conversation, triggering a very public dispute in which both men gave contradictory versions of events. 

Puerta spoke of exhaustion and tachycardia after nearly 20 weeks on the road with a temperamentally demanding player. Davidovich said Puerta blocked him and his wife without warning and had done the same with other players before. The split has since been covered extensively. Former Spanish player Jose Manuel Clavet stepped in to take over the coaching role. The tournament moved on. But the conversation did not go away, and Cerundolo’s incident on Saturday brought it straight back.

The French Open is a five-set tournament in heat, which has been on a relentless pace this fortnight. The pressure inside those matches is real, and it compounds daily as the draws thin out. Relationships between players and coaches are often at their most intense and important at a time like this, and are, of course, put to the test. This year’s tournament has shown just how easily and quickly some of those relationships can break when things go wrong during a match, and the box is the nearest available target. 

Svajda advances to Roland Garros fourth round for the first time

The one who was most fortunate in the chaos was on the other side of the net, Zachary Svajda. The 23-year-old Californian, ranked 85th in the world and playing his first French Open main draw, won in three hours and three minutes and found himself through to the fourth round of a Grand Slam for the first time in his career. The win put him into the top 60 of the ATP rankings and could push him higher based on the length of his run. 

Svajda had already won the first two rounds against Popyrin and Adam Walton at Roland Garros, but this was a whole new level of result. A career moment is beating a seeded player who managed to get to the fourth round in consecutive years, on clay, in a five-setter in this tournament. How he did it with no wavering consistency while the player across the net went off the boil became more emphatic.

“I’m definitely shocked, surprised for sure. It hasn’t kicked in yet. I knew I would get good on the clay. I thought maybe in a few years, but I never expected right now. I’m very grateful and blessed and just taking it all in,” Svajda told the press after the match.

“It’s like I’m dreaming right now, in a dream. It’s crazy. Today was so special, too, because it’s also my dad’s birthday. I know he’s watching from above. It just makes it so special,” he added.

Zachary’s father, Tom Svajda, died at the age of 60 due to colon cancer in October 2025. He was his lifelong coach, and now his son has made it to the round of 16 of a Grand Slam, something Tom would be extremely proud of. The American dedicated his victory in honor of his father’s memory on his birthday. 

His reward in the fourth round is a match against the 10th seed, Flavio Cobolli. The Italian has been one of the quieter but more consistent stories of this Roland Garros fortnight. Cobolli has yet to drop a set in the tournament. This is quite remarkable in an event where numerous matches are going to five sets and the biggest players have fallen in the early rounds. 

For Svajda, a player who had barely featured on the main draw circuit this season before Paris, reaching the fourth round of a Grand Slam on his tournament debut is a result that will reshape his entire year. The draw hasn’t gone as anyone expected, and the American is in the middle of it. For Francisco Cerundolo and Pablo Cuevas, the sterner conversation is the one that has to happen now that Paris is behind them.