Paolini, The Crisis Continues: Out In The Second Round At Roland Garros

Jasmine Paolini was knocked out in the second round of Roland Garros 2026, beaten by Argentina's Solana Sierra 3-6, 6-4, 6-3 after two hours and ten minutes, two years after the Paris final that changed her career. The Tuscan player, world number 13 and thirteenth seed, left the court in tears due to a left ankle problem that has been bothering her since the Internazionali di Roma.

The defeat caps off an extremely difficult May. A week ago Paolini slipped out of the top 10, after one hundred and one consecutive weeks in the top ten since June 2024. Today she sits on 2,787 points, just a few hundred shy of tenth place, and in the coming weeks she has almost nothing to defend: there is room to climb back up, but she needs to start winning matches again.

The decline is visible in her recent results. In Stuttgart, in April, she lost her opening match against Turkey's Zeynep Sonmez with a double 6-2, leaving the court in tears even then. In Madrid she bounced back by beating Laura Siegemund in a comeback, before falling in the third round to American Hailey Baptiste 7-5, 6-3. In Rome, as defending champion, she was eliminated in the third round by Elise Mertens 4-6, 7-6(5), 6-3 after wasting three match points on the Belgian's serve in the second set, losing the 1,000 points from last year's title.

In Paris the script repeated itself. A first-round win over Dayana Yastremska 7-5, 6-3, then against Sierra a break of advantage in the second set, the medical time-out, seven consecutive games lost and the surrender. In the press conference Paolini explained that she has not been at one hundred percent since Rome, that her ankle is still bothering her, and that she needs to stop and take some time before returning.

The calendar now grants her a natural break: after Paris the grass season opens, with Berlin (13-21 June) and Bad Homburg (20-27 June) as warm-up stops on the road to Wimbledon, scheduled from 29 June to 12 July. None of these tournaments weigh heavily on the ranking she has to defend, so every win will be pure gain. But the problem, today, does not seem to be the ranking. It seems to be that ankle which for three weeks has not allowed her to play at her level, and the feeling, listening to her words in Paris, is that she will really need to stop before she can start again.