By Richard Pagliaro | @Tennis_Now | Thursday, May 29, 2025
Photo credit: Corleve/Mark Peterson
Alexander Bublik lit up the red clay court like a skillet and Alex de Minaur felt fried.
Facing a two-set deficit on Court No. 14, Bublik burst back for a 2-6, 2-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-2 comeback win to snap de Minaur's streak of four consecutive major quarterfinals and reach his first Roland Garros third round in his seventh appearance in Paris.
It's a doubly historic victory for 2021 French Open doubles finalist Bublik, who beat de Minaur for the first time in four meetings to become the first man from Kazakhstan to reach the Roland Garros third round.
Alarmed by the 11 a.m. start time, Bublik, who said he typically doesn't leave his Monte-Carlo apartment until noon on non-tournament days, attributed his comeback to two reasons: de Minaur's level dropped and the big man "woke up."
"He was playing unbelievable. He was reaching all my dropshots," Bublik told the media in Paris. "I couldn't make a winner against him. He was returning unbelievable...
"I start fighting. It was fun. I woke up, which is most important thing. For me, at 11:00, it's super complicated to play. I am not waking up at that time. I am usually at 10, 9 I would wake up, have my coffee, speak to my family, play with my son. Like at 12 I'm maybe out of the apartment. Maybe. Not even sure. Impossible, 11:00 for me.
" If I wake up, then I can say, How do I feel today? I feel good, I feel this and that. Can I win this match against the opponent I have today with these tools that I feel the best today? At a certain moment I said, Yes, I can. Let's give it a try. It worked out."
Of course, Bublik pulled off his share of soft-touch magic including the rare front tweener.
Afterward, a dejected de Minaur said he lost the match rather than Bublik winning it.
"I think I lost that one," de Minaur told the media in Paris. "I mean, yeah, probably looking back at my Grand Slam career, I can't think of another match where, yeah, I felt this way and I ended up losing a match that I probably by all means shouldn't have.
"Look, not to give credit away from Bublik, he's extremely dangerous, but saying that, I was also two sets to love up. This is a match that, yeah, I win 99.9% of the times. Today was just the odd occasion that it slipped away."
One of the hardest-working me in the game, de Minaur confessed "I'm tired mentally. I'm a little burned out."
The feisty Aussie said a demanding ATP schedule has drained him and cost him today.
De Minaur called on the ATP to enact a simple solution or face the consequences: Shorten the season or shorten players careers.
"The solution is you shorten it, because what's going to happen is players' careers are going to get shorter and shorter because they're just going to burn out mentally," de Minaur said. "There's just too much tennis.
"Look, there's no excuse, again, for today, myself, what happened today. I need to look at myself in the mirror and find out the reasonings, because ultimately this isn't going to change. It doesn't look like it's going to change. I have to adapt and make sure it doesn't happen again."
The former world No. 17 Bublik hit five of his 12 aces and won 15 of 17 first-serve points in the final set scoring his second straight win over an Aussie after his first-round sweep of James Duckworth.
Seeing his Slam streak of quarterfinals collapse, the ninth-seeded de Minaur joined fourth-seeded Taylor Fritz, seventh-seeded Casper Ruud and No. 11-seeded Daniil Medvedev, who served for the match before bowing to Cameron Norrie in a five-set thriller yesterday, as the fourth Top 11-men’s seed to fall in the first two rounds.
Yesterday, Ruud, hobbled by a left knee injury, hit the "rat race" that is the ATP Tour with a parting shot saying the hectic schedule, ranking points at play and financial penalty if you miss a mandatory event compel players to compete even when they're injured.
Today, de Minaur echoed Ruud's remarks suggesting the ATP knows the crammed calendar is an issue but won't modify it.
"The solution is simple: you shorten the schedule, right?" de Minaur said. "What's not normal is that for the last three, four years I've had two days off after Davis Cup, and I've gone straight into pre-season, straight into the new season again. Yeah, sure, I mean, I could have maybe taken a week or a week and a half.
"That means my pre-season is two weeks long and I'm already starting in Australia, which is my home ground where I want to be doing well. Once you start, you don't finish until November 24th, right? So it's just never ending. That's the sheer fact of it."