Raphaël Collignon walked onto Court Suzanne-Lenglen as the outsider and left it as the man who ended Ben Shelton's tournament. The unseeded 24-year-old, world No. 62, derailed the American fifth seed 6-4, 7-5, 6-4 to reach the third round at Roland Garros. The win made him the first Belgian to land a top-five win at a Grand Slam since his coach Steve Darcis stunned Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon thirteen years ago.
How it was decided
Collignon set the terms early. He came out of the blocks stronger, broke in the seventh game and held untroubled to take the opening set. The second turned on nerve. With the players level at 5-all, Shelton attempted successive forays to the net only to be brought unstuck, cutting a flustered figure as a fruitless appeal to the umpire on a close baseline call did nothing to help his cause. Collignon claimed the set and a commanding two-set lead after two hours.
The finish was clinical. A break point at 3-all went awry, but two games later the Belgian pounced, drawing a backhand error long before serving it out with barely a glitch. Across two hours and three minutes he claimed 43 of 49 first-serve points and never faced a break point. The numbers told of control rather than fortune. The defeat handed Shelton his first loss in 28 completed matches to a player outside the top 30 at a Slam since the 2023 US Open.
The setting mattered. Fighting back tears, Collignon spoke of an emotional night, having come to Roland Garros regularly as a boy, and of winning in front of his family. In the crowd were his doubles partner and Davis Cup teammate Zizou Bergs, and Darcis, also Belgium's Davis Cup captain.
"Yeah, when you have a coach like Steve, it's easy, you just have to listen," he said.
A rising line
This was not a first meeting with the elite. The victory marked his second top-10 win, after denying Alex de Minaur during Belgium's Davis Cup upset of Australia in Sydney last year. The opponent had arrived in form. Shelton was coming off his best clay-court swing, having won the title in Munich to become the first American to claim a title bigger than an ATP 250 on the surface since Andre Agassi in Rome in 2002. The result reframes what Collignon can expect of himself on the game's largest stages.
The teacher once beat Nadal in London. The pupil now has Paris. Collignon will next face either former finalist Stefanos Tsitsipas or Matteo Arnaldi.
A boy who once watched from the stands, now the story of the day.
