In the first major upset of Roland Garros, Birrell rallies to knock off Pegula
For the first time in her career, Kimberly Birrell has won a match at Roland Garros -- and it was a big one.
Roland Garros: Scores | Order of play | Draws
The 83rd-ranked Aussie recorded the first major upset of the event to close the curtain on Day 3 in Paris by beating No. 5 seed Jessica Pegula 1-6, 6-3, 6-3 -- making the American the highest-ranked player to fall in the opening round.
Birrell previously owned two career Top 10 wins, both on home soil in Brisbane. But neither Daria Kasatkina in 2018 nor Emma Navarro last year arrived with the pedigree of Pegula, who entered Roland Garros at World No. 5 and had lost in the first round of a Grand Slam just once in the past five years.
Pegula had also reached at least the third round in each of her previous four appearances in Paris, a stretch that followed back-to-back first-round exits in 2019 and 2020 before she established herself among the game’s elite.
Despite winning fewer points in the match than Pegula overall -- 76 to 80 -- Birrell won the ones that mattered after losing the first set in less than a half hour. She in fact trailed by a set and a break at one stage, having lost eight of the opening 10 games, before storming back for the upset in 1 hour and 41 minutes.
A breathless Birrell was at a loss for words after the match.
"I don’t really know what to say or think," she said after securing not just her first win in Paris, but her first at a Grand Slam that isn't the Australian Open. "When I saw the draw and saw I was playing Jessie, I knew it would be really tough. I really admire her as a player and person. I tried to take it one point at a time. I thought she played so well in the first set. My goal was to just win one game and slowly gain some confidence.
"So happy I was able to play probably the best match I’ve played on clay, and able to play during a Grand Slam, especially here, it’s really really special."
Birrell's best previous major result was a third-round showing in Melbourne back in 2019. To match that effort, she will have to beat Oleksandra Oliynykova, who dropped just three games in her own first-ever French Open win against qualifier Elena Pridankina.
Keys cruises into Round 2
Pegula's compatriot, and "Player's Box" podcast co-host, Madison Keys, had no such troubles against Hanne Vandewinkel in her opening round match. Keys saved three break points at 1-1 in the first set before winning 10 of the last 11 games in a 6-3, 6-0 win.
That might've been all thanks to her friends' scouting reports.
The 22-year-old Belgian, making her Grand Slam main-draw debut after cracking the Top 100 in the PIF WTA Rankings for the first time last month, might've otherwise been an unknown commodity to Keys if her talent had not caught her compatriots' eye twice in Billie Jean King Cup play in the event's last three editions.
In 2024, Vandewinkel won a set against Navarro before losing, and also played Pegula, in a tie the U.S. hosted in Orlando, Fla. -- a team Keys was also a part of. She then scored wins against Iva Jovic and McCartney Kessler in Belgium's 3-1 upset of the U.S. in April's Qualifiers.
"I had an idea [of Vandewinkel's game]," Keys said. "Then, obviously, she played so well against the U.S. team a couple of weeks ago, so I definitely thought that I was going to have to come out and really stick to my game. I think that I did a really good job just kind of doing what I wanted to do and sticking with that."
The No. 19 seed, a semifinalist at the French Open in 2018, faces Antonia Ruzic of Croatia next.
