For a short while during a cool afternoon on the vast Court Philippe Chatrier, it would have been fair to assume that Belinda Bencic was moving away with her third-round match at speed. She had fought back from a first-set deficit to level at one set all, and then she had established a 2-0, 40-0 lead, distancing herself in the final set.
But over the course of her short career, Leylah Fernandez, who stood unmoved across the net, has shown that these tight moments with her back to the wall are often when the best version of herself emerges. Fernandez retrieved the break in that game, breezed through five of the next six games and defeated Bencic 7-5, 3-6, 7-5 to reach the last 16 of the French Open for the first time.
