Roland Garros Chaos: Remembering the Last Times a Grand Slam Was This Wide Open

Paris was supposed to follow the script. Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner had carved up each of the last nine Grand Slams between themselves in a run that has stretched back the last two and a half years. Novak Djokovic proved in January's Australian Open that he was still dangerous at the age of 38. But then, Roland Garros' famed clay courts proceeded to rip that script to shreds.

Alcaraz withdrew before a ball was struck, Sinner went out in the third round, and Djokovic — three-time champion, architect of misery for a generation of hopefuls — went out in the third round too. Standing in the midst of the smoke, clay on his shoes, is Alexander Zverev: the best player on tour never to have won a Grand Slam, staring at the most generous draw of his career, carrying a memory he has never been able to put down. The Big Apple, 2020.

Two sets up. Six points from the title. Then the double faults. Then Dominic Thiem raising his arms. Then Zverev at the net, knowing exactly what he'd done. He's been here before. The question Paris is asking is whether that experience makes this opportunity easier — or worse. Regardless of that heartbreak six years ago, online betting sites still make him the man to beat in Paris.

The latest odds from 5Gringos online sportsbook have installed him as the clear 2.37 favorite to finally claim that maiden slam. But what happened the last time a Slam saw the heavyweights exit early? Who took advantage on those occasions? Let's take a look.

Novak Djokovic was riding the wave of a 33-match winning streak heading into the 2024 Australian Open, a run that had yielded four titles in five years. He had never lost a Melbourne semifinal. Not once. Rafael Nadal was absent through injury, Roger Federer had retired, and the fourth seed — a composed, quietly formidable 22-year-old Italian — was not a threat, in anyone's genuine estimation... until he was.

Sinner dismantled Djokovic in the semifinals. Dismantled him. The first man in history to beat the Serb in a Melbourne semifinal, ending a streak so dominant it had stopped feeling like a streak and started feeling like an annual coronation.

The final against Daniil Medvedev appeared, briefly, to follow a crueler script — Sinner dropped the first two sets 3-6, 3-6, and for a moment it seemed like the sport was simply producing another footnote for Djokovic's eventual return. Then Sinner reeled off three straight sets 6-4, 6-4, 6-3.

First Italian man to win the Australian Open since 1976. Youngest champion at Melbourne Park since Djokovic himself in 2008. He went on to win the 2024 US Open and the 2025 Australian Open. None of it starts without that semifinal. None of it starts without the draw opening up and a player ready enough to walk through.

The afternoon Frances Tiafoe beat Rafael Nadal at the 2022 US Open, Arthur Ashe Stadium changed. The entire atmosphere around the Big Apple turned on its head. Djokovic wasn't there — barred from entering the United States over his medical stance, his absence a wound in the draw before the tournament began.

Medvedev, the defending champion, was the first seed. Nadal, fresh off a French Open and Australian Open double, was the second. Alcaraz, 19, was the third. And then, inside 24 hours, Nick Kyrgios sent Medvedev crashing out in the fourth round, and Tiafoe ended Nadal's 22-match Grand Slam winning streak the very next day. First US Open without either of the top two seeds in the quarterfinals since 2000.

Into that vacuum walked a teenager. Alcaraz became only the third man in the Open Era to win three consecutive five-set matches on the way to a major title, then defeated Casper Ruud in the final 6-4, 2-6, 7-6, 6-3. Youngest Grand Slam champion since Nadal's first Roland Garros in 2005. First teenager to reach world No. 1 in ATP history. The draw handed him the opening. What he did with it was entirely his own.

Here is where it gets uncomfortable for Zverev. No major has ever looked like the 2020 US Open: behind closed doors, inside a bubble, the crowd replaced by silence and the baseline sound of a sport playing to nobody. Federer absent. Nadal absent. Djokovic defaulted in the fourth round after a ball struck in frustration caught a line judge in the throat — an exit so strange, so sudden, that the tournament felt briefly suspended between realities. The path to the title had never looked more inviting.

Zverev reached his first major final. He took the first two sets. At 3-5 in the fifth, he was six points from the championship. Then came the double faults. Then came Thiem, clawing back from two sets down — the first player in Open Era history to recover from that deficit in a US Open final — winning 2-6, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 7-6(6). Thiem fell to his knees. Zverev stood at the net.

That image has followed Zverev through every major since. It follows him now through the red clay of Roland-Garros, through morning practice sessions and pre-match rituals, and the particular private silence before a tournament like this one begins to ask its questions. He knows what it feels like to stand at the edge of history. He knows what it costs to take a step back.