Chaos continued at the French Open on Friday, when Novak Djokovic joined the parade out of the tournament. It’s a parade that also includes Jannik Sinner and every other active male player who has ever won a Grand Slam title. That’s right; for the first time in men’s tennis history, no former slam winner is in the round of 16.
What will Saturday do for an encore? We will find out when Coco Gauff, Naomi Osaka and many more take the court.
I’m 5-1 over the past 2 days, so let’s keep the momentum going with my best bets on the Day 7 schedule.
Victoria Mboko ML over Madison Keys (-120)
Mboko already defeated Keys earlier this year on the hard courts of Adelaide. Now the young Canadian has 4 more months of experience under her belt (every little bit helps when you are 19 years old) and she is facing Keys on the 31-year-old American’s worst surface. Keys is dangerous on any kind of court, to be clear, but her power game is least effective on the red stuff. She really hasn’t done much anywhere this season, whereas Mboko’s 24-8 match record for the 2026 campaign has her stardom still firmly on the rise.
Moise Kouame +2.5 sets over Alejandro Tabilo (-150)
This is one of the wildest tennis lines in recent memory, with Kouame being priced as a ML underdog of +400 or more at most books. The only explanation is that he is coming off a tough 5-set match, whereas Tabilo got a walkover in round 2. Still, the Frenchman has youth (17) on his side and had a full day off to recover. We have already seen guys like Casper Ruud and Jakub Mensik have no trouble bouncing back from energy-sapping matches to advance amidst the scorching heat in Paris. And Kouame doesn’t even have to advance on Saturday — he just needs to win 1 set. Don’t forget that he crushed Marin Cilic in the opening round, so it’s not like the teenager’s presence in the last 32 is some kind of fluke. As the last French player still in the men’s singles draw, Kouame is once again going to get tons of support. Don’t be surprised if he wins this one outright.
Martin Landaluce +1.5 sets over Juan Manuel Cerundolo (-150)
Cerundolo is coming off the biggest win of his career (and one of the biggest moments of the tennis season). Building on a monumental result is never an easy thing to do. So many times over the years we have seen an underdog deliver a mammoth upset and then wilt in the following round. Cerundolo’s stunner against Jannik Sinner required 5 sets, so it took both a mental and physical toll. Credit the little-known Argentine for hanging tough, but let’s not forget that he was 1 game away from getting blown out in straight sets before Sinner suddenly hit the wall physically. Not even Cerundolo is pretending that he won fair and square. Landaluce is the more talented all-around player (by a comfortable margin), so asking him to simply take 2 sets is a strong play. The 20-year-old Spaniard cashed for me in each of his first 2 matches, so I’m going right back to the well.
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