Gael Monfils played the last match of his Roland Garros career late on Monday night, falling to fellow Frenchman Hugo Gaston 6-2, 6-3, 3-6, 2-6, 6-0 in a first-round contest that captured everything the Parisian has been about for two decades. The 39-year-old, ranked 218 in the world and competing at Roland Garros for the 19th and final time, lost a match that ran past three hours and finished just minutes before midnight local time on a sweltering Court Philippe-Chatrier.
The scoreline tells its own story. Monfils, two sets and a break down against the 118th-ranked Gaston, somehow dragged himself back into the contest, levelling the match in front of a packed and increasingly delirious 15,000-strong crowd that had stayed late into the night to roar him on. But the physical effort eventually caught up with him in the decider, and Gaston ran away with a bagel set to close out the win.
The farewell. What followed has rarely been seen on the Paris clay. The crowd stayed put for an on-court ceremony that brought Richard Gasquet, Gilles Simon and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga out to embrace the last of the so-called New Musketeers still active on tour. All four cracked the ATP top 10 in their careers, and Monfils, who announced last autumn that 2026 would be his final season, will be the last of the quartet to retire. A tribute video played on the Chatrier big screens carried messages from Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, each of them saluting a man who shared a generation with the very greatest in the sport’s history.
Monfils on his wife. In the most emotional moment of the night, Monfils turned to address his wife, fellow tour player Elina Svitolina. “I would like to thank my wife. Without her, I might not be here tonight. We have been together for eight wonderful years. You have supported me, lifted me up, and loved me. You gave me the most beautiful gift, our daughter. I love you.” Gaston, the man who had just ended his Roland Garros story, offered his own tribute from the other side of the net. “I’m sorry for you. Whenever I turned on the TV, I wanted to watch Gael play. He is a French legend, a legend of our sport.”
The legacy. Monfils never won a Grand Slam, never lifted a Masters 1000 trophy, never finished a season as world No. 1. What he gave the sport instead was 21 years of theatre, 13 ATP titles, a 2008 Roland Garros semifinal, a 2016 US Open semifinal, and a body of acrobatic, joy-soaked tennis that turned ordinary first-round matches into appointment viewing. In January he became the oldest player ever to win an ATP Tour title, claiming his 13th in Auckland at 38 years and 132 days, eclipsing the mark previously held by Federer. He plans to play out the rest of 2026 before stepping away for good.
Gaston moves on. For Gaston, the win is significant in its own right. The 25-year-old from Toulouse has had a difficult run of form in recent seasons and arrives in the second round at his home Slam having beaten one of the most beloved figures in French sport. He will face Argentina’s Tomas Etcheverry next, and whatever happens from here, he will forever be the man who closed the book on La Monf in Paris.
