The 2025 French Open opened under sweltering conditions in Paris, with two-time Roland Garros runner-up Casper Ruud pulling off a dramatic comeback victory over Russian qualifier Roman Safiullin in a five-set first-round marathon that tested both men’s physical and mental limits. Temperatures climbed to 33 degrees Celsius across the tournament’s opening two days, turning the clay courts of Court Simonne-Mathieu into a grueling heat trap that pushed both competitors to the brink of exhaustion.
Ruud, the 15th seed in the men’s draw, entered the match as the clear favorite and raced out to an early lead, taking the first set 6-2 and edging a tight second-set tiebreak 7-5 to go two sets up. But by the third set, the brutal heat had already begun to take its toll: the Norwegian squandered five consecutive match points, and started suffering painful leg cramps that would only worsen as the match dragged on. He called a medical timeout to address heat-related distress, and relied on ice towels and repeated water douses between changeovers in a desperate attempt to bring his core body temperature down.
Safiullin, who had been down 2-5 in the third set, capitalized on Ruud’s physical collapse to mount an extraordinary comeback: the Russian qualifier won 11 straight games to steal the third set 7-5 and take the fourth set 6-0, turning a match that looked like an easy Ruud win into a deciding fifth set. Like Ruud, however, Safiullin also struggled with the extreme conditions, requiring on-court medical treatment for injury issues late in the fourth set. Both players left the court for an extended cooling break before the fifth set, a pause that would prove pivotal for Ruud.
When play resumed, the 27-year-old Norwegian had recovered enough of his strength and focus to dominate the decider, closing out a 6-2, 7-5 (7), 5-7, 0-6, 6-2 win after nearly four hours of competition. The entire clash stretched three hours and 56 minutes on the outer Parisian clay court.
In post-match comments, Ruud opened up about the debilitating impact of the Paris heatwave, comparing his experience to a past heat-related retirement on the ATP tour. “It felt like a bit of a heatstroke feeling,” he explained. “I experienced something similar some years ago when I played in Washington DC and I had to retire in the third set because of it. That’s the only time I had that same feeling as I had today in the fourth set, where I felt at times really dizzy, really tired and walking around like a zombie almost.”
Ruud credited the mid-match pause for giving him a chance to recover enough to finish the match. “Luckily, I was 2-1 up still [in sets] and allowed myself to kind of lower the intensity a bit to get my pulse and body temperature down as much as possible in the fourth to see if there was any chance to finish in the fifth and have some extra energy. Luckily, that ended up working.”
When asked if the win counted as a victory of mental toughness or physical resilience, Ruud said it was both, but emphasized the role of mental grit in getting him across the finish line. “It feels like a mental win,” he said. “At times in the fourth [set] I was thinking ‘I have to book the flight home tomorrow and I’ll be watching from home on the sofa the next two weeks’. Luckily, that’s not the case. Physically, also, I’m proud because I never really gave in. I didn’t give up.”