Day 4: Humbert stuns Alcaraz

For 26 minutes, no one could quite believe what they were seeing. Ugo Humbert wiped the floor with the current world No.2 (and former No.1). France’s best player was flying and he was 5-1 to the good. This was the stuff of dreams.

The trouble with dreams is that you eventually have to wake up. Not Humbert. He was in fantasy land – he could barely do any wrong. And yet it was not that unexpected, not to him at any rate.

“I'm not afraid of playing the best players, I'm capable of beating them,” he said before the match. “I'm looking forward to the atmosphere.

I'm going to try and take [the French fans] with me. I hope they'll push me like never before. I'm going to give it my all to try and snatch victory."

And that is exactly what he did. He won 6-1, 3-6, 7-5 in two hours and 19 minutes of sheer bliss for the packed Cour Central crowd. The first set was a blur of Humbert dominance; the second was a statement of resistance from the multiple Grand Slam champion. And then the third? That was a battle of nerves, one that Humbert won on his second match point.

“I’m just super proud of myself that I did it,” Humbert said. “It was a crazy match, a crazy atmosphere. I tried to do everything tonight. It was a really big match.”

Rune edges Cazaux

If anyone thinks the atmosphere on Court Central is intense, they should go to Court 1. With Danes and French outcheering each other to get their man across the line in the more intimate setting (as a spectator, you feel as if you are sitting on the shoulders of the players), Holger Rune finally got the better of Arthur Cazaux 3-6, 6-3, 6-4. It was loud, it was fierce and, for Rune, the former champion, it was fraught. If there was little between the two men on the stats sheet, it all came down to aggression – and Rune took the lead in that department. That is what counted in the end.