South Africa’s top-ranked men’s tennis player Lloyd Harris lost 6-1 7-6 to Mattia Bellucci in the qualifying round of the French Open at Roland Garros on Wednesday.
It was the second round of qualifying for Harris, after he beat Frenchman Arthur Gea 6-2 1-6 7-5 on Monday.
Having achieved a career-high ATP singles ranking of 31st in September 2021, Harris now finds himself way down in 128th.
The 27-year-old was hoping to make it into the main draw of the French Open for the sixth time, with the tournament starting on Sunday. In fact, Harris played in every French Open from 2019 to 2023.
The moment Lloyd Harris captured his first Challenger title since 2019 🇿![CDATA[]]>🇦#ATPChallenger | @TennisSA pic.twitter.com/SDRn1VPb94
— ATP Challenger Tour (@ATPChallenger) April 21, 2024
Back-to-back titles
This comes after Harris won back-to-back ATP Challenger Tour titles last month.
Having battled a number of injuries over the last year, Harris had made good progress having fallen to 182nd on the ATP rankings in February.
His coach Anthony Harris, told OFM Sport last month: “When we started the pre-season for this year in December, he was healthy, he was strong and he was happy,” said Harris.
“He decided to make a huge investment into his fitness on a level that he hadn't really done before.
“He stayed very focused on improving, kept believing that if he put in the hard work that he would get back to where he was, as long as his body was healthy.
“I think that his belief, his determination and his ability to stay positive and keep fighting in the last two weeks has shown that, that was all correct and now he is starting to see some results for all the hard work.”
Rafael Nadal has grabbed most of the headlines leading up to the French Open as it will be his last appearance at the event he has won a record 14 times. The top contenders this year in the men’s draw are Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic, Jannik Sinner and Alexander Zverev.