Kimberly Birrell came from behind to beat No. 5 seed Jessica Pegula 1-6, 6-3, 6-3 on Day 3 at Roland Garros, delivering the tournament’s first major upset and winning her first career match in Paris.
Birrell, ranked 83rd, rallied after losing the first set and falling a break down to take control, closing out the match in 1 hour and 41 minutes. The 1-6, 6-3, 6-3 scoreline left Pegula as the highest-ranked player to fall in the opening round and marked only Birrell’s third career win over a top-10 opponent; the Australian’s previous two top-10 wins both came in Brisbane.
“I don’t really know what to say or think,” Birrell said after the match. “When I saw the draw and saw I was playing Jessie, I knew it would be really tough. I really admire her as a player and person. I tried to take it one point at a time. I thought she played so well in the first set. My goal was to just win one game and slowly gain some confidence.”
The upset was jarring because Pegula had been remarkably consistent at Grand Slams: she had reached at least the third round in each of her previous four appearances in Paris and had lost in the first round of a major just once in the past five years. Yet on this clay court afternoon she could not convert a strong opening set into a win, and Birrell used momentum to break back and seize the match.
Birrell’s run through the match rewrote her Roland Garros record—she had never before won a match at the tournament—and improved on her best major showing, a third-round run in Melbourne in 2019. Her confidence was bolstered not only by the upset but by her history of beating top players in Brisbane: in 2018 she beat Daria Kasatkina and earlier this year she defeated Emma Navarro.
There was tension in the turnaround. Birrell trailed by a set and a break, and Pegula’s status as a top-10 player and recent Slam consistency made her the expected winner. The gap between expectation and result underlined how quickly matches can flip on clay; Birrell’s insistence on taking the match point by point paid off, and Pegula’s early dominance evaporated as Birrell found rhythm.
Birrell will face Oleksandra Oliynykova next, a player who arrived in Paris in strong form after dropping just three games in her first-ever French Open win against qualifier Elena Pridankina. That sets up a second-round test between two players who enter the match with noticeably different stories from the first round: Birrell on the crest of a landmark upset and Oliynykova having cruised through her opener.
Elsewhere on the court, Madison Keys beat Hanne Vandewinkel 6-3, 6-0 in an opening-round match. Vandewinkel was making her Grand Slam main-draw debut after cracking the Top 100 in the PIF WTA Rankings last month; Keys, who faced Vandewinkel, said, "I had an idea [of Vandewinkel's game]," as she moved into the next round.
For birrell, the win is both vindication and an immediate challenge. "So happy I was able to play probably the best match I’ve played on clay, and able to play during a Grand Slam, especially here, it’s really really special," she said, a clear declaration that the upset will not be treated as an endpoint but as a beginning—the second-round match against Oliynykova will show whether this victory is a rare highlight or the start of a deeper run in Paris.
