PARIS — Clearly hampered by a bad left knee, two-time French Open finalist Casper Ruud dropped 13 of the last 14 games and lost 2-6, 6-4, 6-1, 6-0 to Nuno Borges in the second round at Roland-Garros on Wednesday, then revealed he had been playing in pain off-and-on throughout the clay-court season.
The seventh-seeded Ruud reached at least the semifinals each of the past three years in Paris — he was the runner-up to Rafael Nadal in 2022 and Novak Djokovic in 2023 — and this exit is his earliest at the tournament since bowing out in the second round in his debut in 2018.
He's been taking pain-killing and anti-inflammatory pills the past several weeks, and did so again Wednesday. But Ruud said the knee began bothering him in the first set against Borges, who is ranked 41st and became the first Portuguese man to get to the French Open's third round.
Ruud said the worst shot for his knee is an open-stance backhand, in which he slides on his left foot, so he's been avoiding it in practice.
''Certain movements out there are kind of what makes it painful. Certain shots are painful to do. When you're playing matches, you can't really control it in the same way (as in practice). You do everything you can to get to every ball,'' said Ruud, who also reached the final at the 2022 U.S. Open. ''Sometimes you kind of forget that this is a shot I shouldn't go for.''
He was visited by a trainer and took some pills during Wednesday's match, but nothing seemed to help.
''It's a Slam. I love this tournament," Ruud said. "Looking back, I tried my best to continue (and tried) to avoid the shots that are hurting. But towards the end, there were also other movements that started hurting, so it wasn't ideal.''
He said the problems began in his first clay event of the pre-French Open stretch, at Monte Carlo in April, and that he had medical exams a couple of weeks later in Madrid — where he went on to win the title. Ruud pulled out of the Geneva Open, which was played last week.
