A few short days ago there were twelve Australian hopefuls lining up to qualify for the French Open tennis tournament. The twelve comprised of seven men and five women.
Three men advanced to the second round of qualifying and just one woman. After the dust had settled at the end of round two it was only Bernard Tomic that was still in with a chance to reach the main draw.
Tomic would face Goncalo Oliveira of Portugal, the world no. 221. The 23-year-old Oliveira has a career-high ranking of 194 and has mostly battled it out on the Challenger tour in 2018. His best result in 2018 was reaching the quarterfinals of the Open Citta Della Disfida ATP Challenger event played on clay.
Tomic had a horror run in 2017. He started the year ranked at 26, by year end he had fallen to 140, and his fall continued to the point where he found himself ranked at no. 243 his lowest ranking since June 2010.
After recently reaching the final of an ATP Challenger tournament on clay, Tomic had started to turn things around. He lost that final to fellow Australian John Millman 6-1, 6-2, but that result took him back into the top 200.
In Paris, Tomic continued to play well and had comfortably won his first two qualifying before being pushed by Oliveira, but Tomic did enough to claim a 7-6(5), 7-5 win. The 11th game of the second set had several match or game points come and go before Tomic got the crucial break before serving for the match.
