Roland Garros 2024: Tiafoe, Stearns win thrillers in R1 as 16 Americans advance

After three days of first-round play at Roland Garros, 16 Americans are still standing in singles competition, including all nine seeded players from the U.S. It marks the fifth year in a row that 15 or more Americans have advanced to the second round in Paris; the last time that happened in five straight years was from 1993-97.

Frances Tiafoe and Peyton Stearns scored the most dramatic victories, with both battling deep into deciding sets to advance in France.

On the men's side, Tiafoe is joined by 12th seed Taylor Fritz, 14th seed Tommy Paul, 15th seed Ben Shelton, 27th seed Sebastian Korda and Brandon Nakashima in the second round. Stearns is one of 10 American women winners, alongside third seed Coco Gauff, 11th seed Danielle Collins, 14th seed Madison Keys, 22nd seed Emma Navarro, Katie Volynets, Amanda Anisimova, Sofia Kenin, Hailey Baptiste and Bernarda Pera.

Tiafoe completes comeback

Tiafoe left it late in a 6-3, 3-6, 6-7(6), 6-4, 6-4 victory against Italy's Mattia Bellucci, breaking in the ninth game of sets four and five to secure the comeback victory. The 25th seed leaned on his serve in the final two sets, during which he did not face a break point against the 22-year-old Italian qualifier.

After nearly four hours on court, the American booked a second-round meeting with Denis Shapovalov. An April finalist in Houston, where he lost to Ben Shelton in the championship match to open his clay season, Tiafoe is bidding to notch consecutive wins for the first time since that run on home soil.

Shelton picked up his first Roland Garros victory with a comeback of his own in a 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 decision against Frenchman Hugo Gaston. The former Florida Gator is no stranger to hostile environments from his college days, but he enjoyed the buzz on the court against the home favorite.

Stearns wins decisive tie-break... twice!

Former University of Texas star Peyton Stearns—a former NCAA team and singles champion, like Shelton—battled for two-and-half-hours to beat Croatian qualifier Lucija Ciric Bagaric, 6-3, 3-6(8), 7-6(10-6).

After missing out on five match points in the second set, the 22-year-old advanced to the Paris second round for the second straight year with a gutsy performance in the 10-point tiebreak. She thought she had the match won when she got to seven points in the decisive tiebreak and began to walk to the net for the handshake, only to realize she was still three points away from victory in the extended final-set breaker. Undeterred, Stearns stayed the course to close out her first major win since her fourth-round run at the 2023 US Open.

Next up for Stearns: 10th seed Daria Kasatkina.