French Open qualies: Sandgren, Pera, Lepchenko win

Team USA will have 17 women and 10 men—combined, the most of any nation—in the main draw of the French Open after a trio of U.S. players advanced through qualifying Friday.

Top seeds Bernarda Pera and Tennys Sandgren (pictured above) won their third and final qualifying matches and Varvara Lepchenko punched her ticket to the 128-player main field for the second Slam of the year that begins Sunday in Paris.

Pera, the world No. 83 who narrowly missed out on direct entry into the main draw, advanced with a 6-4, 1-6, 7-6 victory over Kaja Juvan. It means she’ll be competing in the main draw of a major for the sixth consecutive Slam after making her debut at that level at the 2018 Australian Open.

Pera famously upset world No. 10 Johanna Konta last year in the second round in Melbourne. She went on to reach the second round of both the French Open and US Open in 2018, either side of a first-round exit at Wimbledon.

Elsewhere on Friday, Lepchenko beat world No. 193 Valentini Grammatikopoulou of Greece, 6-2, 6-2, to cap a perfect week in which she didn’t drop a set and lost only six games in her final two matches.

The 33-year-old left-hander missed the 2018 US Open and 2019 Australian Open after appearing in the main draw of the previous 31 majors dating back to the 2010 US Open, when she lost in qualifying.

This will be Lepchenko’s 12th French Open and her 11th in as many years. While she hasn’t been past the second round here in five years, she did reach the fourth round in 2012, tied for her best Slam appearance.

The Americans fill two of the 13 spots available in the draw—12 places for qualifiers and one reserved for a lucky loser, after Camila Giorgi withdrew from the main draw. They will be placed into the draw upon the conclusion of the qualifying matches, and they have a 10-in-13 chance of avoiding a seed in Round 1 and a slim chance of facing a wild card.

On the men’s side, the last U.S. man alive in qualifying, Tennys Sandgren, moved into the main draw after beating Mathias Bourgue of France, 7-6, 7-5.

Like with Pera, Sandgren’s current ranking of 87 would have been high enough to get him into the main draw directly if it was based on today’s standings. But he was just outside the cutoff when the entry list was finalized, meaning he had to play through three qualifying rounds in Paris this week.

The Tennessee native has spent a little more than four hours on court over his three contests, the longest of which was his one-hour, 46-minute battle on Court 7 Friday.

The 27-year-old lost in the first round in each of his only other two trips to Paris in 2017 and 2018, but a quarterfinal run at the 2018 Australian Open is a reminder of his potential to go deep into a major.