World No. 3 Jessica Pegula‘s hopes of hoisting a Grand Slam trophy ended in despair Friday after a 6-1, 6-3 loss to Belgian Elise Mertens in the third round of the French Open.
Pegula, 29, had no answer to Mertens’ versatile game. Mertens, a former world No. 1 in doubles, used her complete arsenal of shots, including sliced forehands, drop shots, lobs and deep groundstrokes, to move her opponent around and pin her back.
Mertens, ranked 28th, was near flawless at the start, breaking the American twice in a row and leading Pegula to toss her racket to the ground. Mertens raced to a 5-0 lead and claimed the first set in just 26 minutes.
Pegula, who had advanced to the third round after Camila Giorgi retired after the first set, broke Mertens early in the second, but the Belgian player responded in the next game.
Pegula earned another rare break opportunity at 3-2 but then sank three consecutive backhands into the net.
Mertens, 27, took advantage of Pegula’s low first-serve percentage to break her again for a 5-3 lead, leaving the frustrated American to shake her head and look at her coaching box for any help.
Her ordeal was over after 82 minutes with her 28th unforced error.
Mertens will attempt to make it beyond the fourth round in Paris for the first time when she plays Sunday against No. 24 Anastasia Potapova or 2021 French Open runner-up Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.
No. 9 Daria Kasatkina made light work of another American in Peyton Stearns, picking up a 6-0, 6-1 victory in just under an hour.
Stearns, a big hitter who defeated 2017 French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko in the second round, simply could not find her targets on a day with a breeze at about 10 mph and a chill in the low 60s Fahrenheit.
More than half of Kasatkina’s 59 points came via the 30 unforced errors by Stearns.
Pegula had similar issues, making 28 unforced errors to only 13 by Mertens.
Kasatkina will face Russian compatriot Anna Blinkova or Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina for a place in the quarterfinals.
With Pegula joining No. 5 Caroline Garcia, No. 8 Maria Sakkari and No. 10 Petra Kvitova on the sideline, four of the top 10 women’s seeds already are gone. That’s part of a pattern this year at Roland Garros: Only 12 seeds made it through two rounds, the fewest in Paris since the field expanded to 32 seeds in 2002.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.