Winners of the week
Italian clay specialist Flavio Cobolli underlined that he is a force to be reckoned with at Roland Garros, when he won the biggest title of his career by upsetting third seed Andrey Rublev 6-2, 6-4 to win the Hamburg Open.
Ranked number 35 in the world, Cobolli had only one ATP 250 title to his name, having won the Romanian Open last month, but the 23-year-old now has two clay-court titles after dismantling Rublev in the final of the ATP 500 event.
Cobolli thereby became just the third player to win multiple titles on the ATP Tour this year after Carlos Alcaraz (three) and Felix Auger-Aliassime (also two), as the impressive win also saw him rise to a career-high 26th in the rankings.
A little over 1000 km to the south of Hamburg, Novak Djokovic won the 100th singles title of his career by beating Hubert Hurkacz 5-7, 7-6(2), 7-6(2) at the Geneva Open in Switzerland. He thereby became only the third man in the Open Era to win 100 titles, after Jimmy Connors and Roger Federer.
Djokovic arrived in the bank capital without any wins on clay this season, but recovered his form just in time for the French Open, where he bids for a fourth crown.
On the WTA Tour, No. 4 seed Elena Rybakina ended a year-long title drought on Saturday, posting a 6-1, 6-7(2), 6-1 victory over No. 8 seed Liudmila Samsonova to capture the WTA 500 Internationaux de Strasbourg title in France.
The former Wimbledon champion Rybakina otherwise had not reached a final since April 2024, when she won another clay-court title at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix. The win in Strasbourg was Rybakina's ninth career WTA singles title; four of her previous titles have also come on clay.
Strugglers of the week
Alexander Zverev certainly didn't have the perfect warm up for the Roland Garros as he suffered another early exit before the second Grand Slam tournament of the year, being eliminated in the quarter-final of the Hamburg Open losing 6-3, 4-6, 7-6(5) to Frenchman Alexandre Muller, who is ranked 40 in the world.
The German said sickness was behind his lacklustre showing. "It was OK considering I threw up 37 times and had a fever of 39.4 degrees (Celsius, 102.9 Fahrenheit) all night."
The 28-year-old said his opponent had taken advantage of his poor condition.
"When I had to walk it was difficult. He then realised at some point I wasn't feeling well and made the points last as long as possible."
The German was also eliminated in the quarter-finals in Rome in straight sets against Lorenzo Musetti 7-6 (1), 6-4, and the German has confessed that he is battling severe mental distress due to his recent string of failures on the court.
“I have no idea what’s happening to me right now. I have been trying to understand it for several months, but I don’t even know what to say anymore", said Zverev at the beginning of April as he bowed out of the Monte Carlo Open, and he seems far from his best going into the French Open.
Moment of the week
American contender Danielle Collins, who was set to end her career last year given the fact that she has been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and endometriosis - with the former the same disease that haunted Caroline Wozniacki - has turned into a divisive figure on the Tour.
She has often found herself in the midst of controversy as she previously told a booing Australian Open crowd that they “pay her bills”, and has also earlier taken issue with Iga Swiatek. Collins captured the headlines again in the past week during the WTA tournament in Strasbourg as she, during her match with Emma Raducanu, told a camera operator to give them space and claimed the TV crew were being “inappropriate”.
“I need to get water. We’re on a changeover. You don’t need to be that close to me and you don’t need to be on top of Emma. It’s wildly inappropriate. It's not that difficult to give space, I'm sorry,” she said.
While Collins’ on-court antics have often frustrated other players, Raducanu admitted after the match that she had no problem with the 31-year-old's behaviour.
Rallies of the week
Cobolli and Rublev treated the crowd at the Rothenbaum Arena in the Hamburg Open final to an amazing tennis afternoon where Cobolli won a spectacular clay-court rally with a strong forehand winner.
Canada's Felix Auger-Aliassime had to battle for his ticket into the semi-finals of the Hamburg Open as he closed off a marathon match on his seventh match point against Alexandre Muller with a delicious drop-shot volley.
Upcoming events
Over the next two weeks, all eyes of the tennis world will be on Roland Garros, which was the first Grand Slam tournament to join the "Open" era in 1968. Since then, many tennis greats have graced the famous clay courts, including Bjorn Borg, Ivan Lendl, Mats Wilander, Gustavo Kuerten, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.
Carlos Alcaraz won the 2024 French Open after beating Alexander Zverev in the final. Iga Swiatek won her third consecutive French Open title in the 2024 tournament, drawing her closer to Chris Evert's record of seven titles.
Rafael Nadal has rightly been known as "the king of clay" as 14 of the Spaniard's 22 career Grand Slams came on the French Open's clay courts.
For 2025, the prize money pool has been announced to be €56.352 million, an increase of 5.37% compared to the prize pool for the 2024 edition.