Andrey Rublev survives in four sets as French No.1 Ugo Humbert dumped out at Roland Garros

The opening day continues at Roland Garros with Carlos Alcaraz just on the court for his French Open return and Andrey Rublev has just left after a successful albeit gruelling opener against Taro Daniel.

After winning Madrid albeit with his hoodoo of not getting past a Quarter-Final in a Grand Slam, Rublev has cause for optimism albeit having recently been ill and being defeated early at Rome. But he suffered no such problems in Paris on Sunday afternoon. The sixth seed in Paris, he won in three hours.

He sealed the win 6-2, 6-7, 6-3, 7-5 in the end after narrowly losing the second set tie-break after having set points a plenty at 5-4 which likely would've removed at least an extra hour for the top 10 star against the Japanese ace who is ranked inside the top 80. But he managed to win the next two sets to seal the win and now looks ahead.

His opponent though could be a tougher proposition than Daniel, Pedro Martinez or Thiago Agustin Tirante are both fairly handy on the surface in comparison to Taro Daniel. They are currently embroiled though in a gruelling third set. The likely seed that could await Rublev is Arthur Fils or it could feasibly be Matteo Arnaldi so tough on any route realistically. But it certainly won't be Ugo Humbert who is just below in the draw.

The French No.1 had such a successful start to the season as he usurped the resurrection of Adrian Mannarino. But has floundered since and continues to do so. In front of his home crowd, it was a bit of a let down. He was bounced in 3-1 (4-6, 6-2, 4-6, 6-3) by Lorenzo Sonego who himself is a bad draw for any of the top seeds given that he is ranked top 50 and with a few wins would be a seed himself. But still though it highlights the fleeting nature of tennis and how one can go from hero to zero pretty quickly.

The Italian already knows his opponent and it is a tough assignment in Chinese trailblazer, Zhizhen Zhang who also won in four today against Aleksandar Vukic. They sit in the Stefanos Tsitsipas section just below Rublev. Nicolas Moreno de Alboran made it that alongside Ajla Tomljanovic that two of the reciprocal wildcards were bounced in the opening morning. He was defeated by Brandon Nakashima in four sets in just under three hours.

Currently on court are Jack Draper, Hubert Hurkacz, Grigor Dimitrov, Jordan Thompson and Carlos Alcaraz with Kei Nishikori and Luca Nardi among those set to get underway shortly.