- Hugo Gaston defeated Alex De Minaur in the first round of the 2022 French Open.
- Gaston entered the match as the +372 underdog against the 19th seeded Australian.
- The Frenchman will next face Pedro Cachin as the -138 betting favorite at Bet365 USA.
There’s something about Paris that makes Hugo Gaston a different tennis player.
The 74th-ranked tennis player in the Pepperstone ATP rankings entered the 2022 French Open having won six of his 16 tour-level triumphs in the City of Lights. Two of his biggest wins have come in Paris and on Monday, in the opening round of Roland Garros, the Frenchman added another one.
Currently listed as a +50000 longshot to win the tournament at the best tennis betting sites, Gaston produced one of the early notable upsets at the 2022 French Open.
Gaston Pulls Off the +372 Upset
TAKE. A. BOW.
Hugo Gaston (+372) pulls the upset in front of the home crowd in a marathon match #RolandGarros pic.twitter.com/YpqWQXxt44
— BetOnline.ag (@betonline_ag) May 24, 2022
Gaston faced 19th-ranked Alex De Minaur in the opening round of the tournament and did so as a sizable betting underdog. With the help of the Court Suzanne Lenglen urging him on, the Frenchman pulled off the +372 betting upset.
De Minaur looked headed to a routine win after winning nine consecutive matches from the beginning of the fourth set. The top-ranked Australian tennis player had Gaston on the brink after winning the fourth set 6-0 and building a 3-0 lead to start the fifth set. But Gaston flipped the switch and turned to giant-killer mode once again. It wasn’t easy.
Gaston battled cramps in the last couple of games before the tie-breaker. The Frenchman kept on shaking his legs as he served at 6-5 and then went on to deliver an underhand serve at 15-40. He won that point but was broken to send the match into a 10-point tie-break, Gaston then rattled off five straight points to win the tie-breaker 10-4 and clinch the five-set victory.
Asterix the Gaul
Players Hugo Gaston has beaten on French soil:
Stan Wawrinka
Carlos Alcaraz
Pablo Carreno Busta
Alex de Minaur pic.twitter.com/bqrENywK7H— Bastien Fachan (@BastienFachan) May 24, 2022
This isn’t the first time that Gaston has pulled off a huge upset at Roland Garros. In 2020, the then 239th ranked Frenchman upset Stan Wawrinka in the third round after watching his live odds go as high as +2000. Gaston also owns two more notable upsets while playing on clay on French soil.
In the Paris Masters last year, Gaston also came back from a 0-5 second-set deficit to beat Carlos Alcaraz 6-4, 7-5 to reach the quarterfinals of the tournament. Alcaraz entered the match with an 83.41% implied probability to win. One match before that, Gaston stunned 12th seeded Pablo Carreno-Busta as a +325 betting underdog Carreno-Busta won the opening set 7-6 but Gaston rallied to win the next two sets 6-4 and 7.5 to set up a date with Alcaraz.
Gaston will now advance to the second round where he will take on 27-year-old Argentine Pedro Cachin who knocked off 112 ranked Norberto Gombos 6-1, 3-6, 6-2, 6-3 in his first-round assignment. Gaston has opened as the -138 betting favorite to win the match at Bet365 USA and the +300 chalk to win the match in straight sets.
