Gael Monfils spent his 40th birthday at the US Open losing the opening set 6-2 and then losing three more games all night. He beat Adolfo Daniel Vallejo of Paraguay 2-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-0 on a full Louis Armstrong Stadium, and the crowd sang Happy Birthday to him at the end of it.
The match turned in the second set and never turned back. Monfils hit 37 winners across the four sets, according to the ATP, and produced the jumping, sliding shot-making that has been his signature since he came on tour in 2004. Vallejo did not win a game in the fourth. “Very special, to play on the day of my 40th birthday,” Monfils said on court.
It was his 34th singles win at the US Open, which tournament statistics record as the most by any Frenchman in New York. Those same records list only two other men aged 40 or over who have won a US Open match in the past 50 years: Ken Rosewall, at 42, in 1977, and Jimmy Connors, on his own 40th birthday, in 1992. No man that old has won here since.
This is Monfils’s 18th US Open and his last. He said at the start of the season that 2026 would be his final year on tour, closing out a career that reached a ranking high of No. 6. The same first round ended Stan Wawrinka’s US Open career two days earlier. He is in the New York draw on a wild card.
Elina Svitolina watched from the box. The two played mixed doubles together during Fan Week and reached the semifinals; Monfils said her birthday present to him was a watch. Next is Learner Tien, who is 20, holds the Next Gen ATP Finals title and beat Monfils in three sets in Montreal last month. After that match Tien asked him for a signature.
Whatever happens in that second round, Monfils has spent 22 years arguing that a tennis match is worth watching for what happens inside the points and not only for who ends up winning them. On Tuesday night on Armstrong he got both.
