PARIS (AP) – Jessica Pegula quickly gathered her belongings and marched out of Court Philippe Chatrier after a 6-1, 6-3 loss to Elise Mertens in the third round yesterday at the French Open, a far earlier exit than the number three seeded American has been used to at Grand Slam tournaments lately.
Pegula was a quarterfinalist at four of the five most recent majors, including a year ago at Roland Garros. She’s never gone further than that stage at a Slam and never really got into this match against the 28th seeded Mertens, a 27-year-old Belgian who was a semi-finalist at the 2018 Australian Open and twice has reached the US Open quarterfinals.
But Mertens still has not made it beyond the fourth round on the red clay in Paris.
She will attempt to do that when she plays tomorrow against number 24 Anastasia Potapova or 2021 French Open runner-up Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.
With Pegula joining number five Caroline Garcia, number eight Maria Sakkari and number 10 Petra Kvitova on the sideline, four of the top 10 women’s seeds already are gone. That’s part of a pattern this year at Roland Garros: Only 12 seeds made it through two rounds, the fewest in Paris since the field expanded to 32 seeds in 2002.
