The 2026 French Open has not gone the way anyone would have predicted. Most of the top 10 seeds are now out of the tournament after unexpected collapses, and that’s not an easy thing to move on from quickly. After a four-set quarterfinal loss to rising Italian star Flavio Cobolli, fourth seed Felix Auger-Aliassime confessed he felt “destroyed.”
Felix Auger-Aliassime’s Honest Breakdown After French Open Loss to Flavio Cobolli
Auger-Aliassime looked like he was on his way to his first French Open semifinal. He won the first set and took an early lead in the second against Flavio Cobolli.
However, the weather changed with blistering wind, and officials had to close the stadium’s roof, completely turning the game around. Cobolli came back and broke the Canadian’s serve five times. After a long match lasting three hours and 24 minutes, Cobolli won with a score of 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4.
For Auger-Aliassime, the loss was so devastating that the 25-year-old was incredibly candid about his mental state after the match. “I’m in a place right now with my tennis career that… it’s tough,” he admitted. “I’m destroyed today a little bit… Right now I feel like I’m not the player I want to be. Today’s a difficult day.”
Earlier that same day, world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka admitted she felt like she wanted to ‘quit tennis’ following her own devastating defeat
After losing to Diana Shnaider 3-6, 7-5, 6-0, Sabalenka stormed off the court and later confessed to falling into a ‘deep, deep, dark hole’ mentally, noting she couldn’t recover emotionally from the second set. The four-time Grand Slam champion also said, “No thoughts, no emotion. I want to quit tennis right now. We’ll see in a few days. Hopefully, I can get back on track mentally.” That might be something Auger-Aliassime could relate to.
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This year, Auger-Aliassime won the Montpellier Open and finished as runner-up at the ABN AMRO Open in Rotterdam, losing the final to Alex de Minaur. His deep tournament runs continued in the Middle East and Europe, reaching the semifinals at the Dubai Tennis Championships before falling to Daniil Medvedev and advancing to the quarterfinals of the Monte Carlo Masters ATP 1000 event, where Jannik Sinner defeated him.
Meanwhile, Cobolli booked his first-ever Grand Slam semifinal appearance and guaranteed his debut in the ATP Top 10. With top-seeded Sinner suffering a second-round exit, Cobolli stepped out of the shadows to carry the torch for Italian tennis, setting up a historic all-Italian men’s semifinal against Matteo Arnaldi.
