The Parisian tournament denied wildcards to these four Grand Slam champions, who must now earn their spots in the qualifying rounds, if they want to compete in the tournament.
Last Friday, Dominic Thiem announced he will retire from tennis at the end of the season. The Austrian tennis player decided to throw in the towel after a long and hard battle with a severe wrist injury that has cut short his career in recent years.
Austrian media speculate that the player, who once ranked number three in the world, will retire after the Vienna Tournament (Erste Bank Open) held this coming October. Until then, he will embark on a farewell tour through the most important and special tournaments for him.
Undoubtedly, one of these is Roland Garros, where he reached the finals in 2018 and 2019 and the semifinals in 2016 and 2017. However, the Parisian tournament did not remember him when distributing its wildcards, according to Mundo Deportivo.
The eight chosen include French players Pierre-Hugues Herbert, Alexandre Muller, Richard Gasquet, Térence Atmane, Harold Mayot, and Giovanni Mpetshi-Perricar, as well as Australian Adam Walton and American Nicolás Moreno de Alborán, the latter two thanks to a swap agreement with the Australian and US tennis federations.
This decision has been highly controversial and criticized by fans, who believe the prestigious tournament is being chauvinistic and mistreating historic players simply because they are not French.
The same is true in the women’s category, where the wildcards have gone to French players Alizé Cornet, Fiona Ferro, Elsa Jacquemot, Kristina Mladenovic, Chloé Paquet, and Jessika Ponchet, as well as Australian representative Ajla Tomljanovic and American Sachia Vickery.
This leaves out players of the caliber of Caroline Wozniacki, Emma Raducanu, and Simona Halep, three Grand Slam champions, two of whom are former world number ones. Like Thiem, they will have to earn their place in the qualifying rounds.
