France's Diane Parry advances to the fourth round of a Major for the first time after a thrilling upset win over No. 6 seed Amanda Anisimova in a three-set battle in the French Open at the Stade Roland Garros in Paris on Saturday. Before this year's French Open, Perry had reached the third round of a Grand Slam five times but had never advanced to the last 16.
On Saturday, playing on Court Philippe-Chatrier in front of a raucous Parisian crowd, Parry finally broke through with a hard-fought three-set upset victory over No. 6 seed Amanda Anisimova, securing a 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 victory in 2 hours, 44 minutes. Both players saved multiple break points in the third set before Parry earned a break to move ahead 4-3, only for Anisimova to break back immediately.
Four games later, the match was decided in a tiebreak. Parry dominated the breaker 10-3 to seal victory. "I think I just believed like all the matches I could win and go take it even in three sets," Parry told the media after her win. "I was feeling good physically.
I felt like my game was disturbing her in some ways, so I was just trying to stay with this in my head and be able to go and take it in the end." The victory was Parry's second career win over a top-10 opponent and snapped a seven-match losing streak against top-10 players.
It also marked her eighth main-draw win at Roland-Garros, her highest total at any Grand Slam tournament. Parry, the last French player in the women's singles draw, has recently added the two-handed backhand to her game, something she says she is still getting used to.
"I started (using the double-handed backhand) before the season to work it to return, and it depends on the type of serve of my opponent, depending on the conditions and the player," she added. "Here, it's a bit difficult because there is a lot of rebound, so it's difficult to find the right distance.
It depends on how I feel that day. It's not the same every day, because it's not a set shot for me yet. I have to adapt, depending on the player and the conditions." She will next face unseeded Pole Maja Chwalińska, who defeated former world No. 3 Maria Sakkari in another three-set third-round battle on Saturday.
For Anisimova, it was her first third-round loss at a Grand Slam since Roland-Garros in 2020, when she fell to Simona Halep. Since that defeat, she had won eight consecutive third-round matches at majors. The American was playing her first clay-court event of the season after withdrawing from Madrid and Rome because of a wrist injury.
Anisimova added that her wrist is feeling fine, which is a positive for her to take away from the tournament. "I feel okay physically," she said. "Kind of hard to assess. I feel like I, even considering everything, could have played better, so I'm pretty disappointed. I probably just need to figure some things out for what to do differently next time. My wrist feels not so bad after a few matches, so that's a positive for sure."