Monfils out of French Open

Originally published on: 24/05/12 00:00

The 25-year-old Trelex resident suffered a shock defeat to world No.216 Brian Baker at the Open de Nice Cote d’Azur on Wednesday and, after picking up an injury, will rest for the next three weeks.

Monfils achieved his career-best Grand Slam result in Paris in 2008, beating the likes of Jurgen Melzer, Ivan Ljubicic and David Ferrer to reach the semi-finals before falling to Roger Federer.

It’s not the first time the world No.13 has been troubled by injury this year. He struggled with a back injury at the Australian Open, ultimately losing to world no.92 Mikhail Kukuskhin in five sets in the third round, and has featured in just six tournaments overall.

He began the year with two finals in his first three tournaments, in Doha and in Montpellier, but despite promising semi-final wins over Rafael Nadal in the former and Gilles Simon in the latter, he lost to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Tomas Berdych respectively in the title matches to slump to a 4-13 record in his 17 ATP final appearances.

The Frenchman has won just three matches during the clay season, beating Philipp Kohlscrehiber and Igor Andreev in Madrid and Alex Bogomolov JR in Rome. He’ll hope to be fit for the grass season and, in particular, Wimbledon, where he has never been beyond the third round.

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