PARIS -- French wild card Hugo Gaston eliminated former champion Stan Wawrinka from the French Open, winning 2-6, 6-3, 6-3, 4-6, 6-0 as spectators chanted his name and cried “Bravo!”
Gaston’s win, which was interrupted by rain with the players at 2-2 in the third set, propels him to a fourth-round match against U.S. Open champion Dominic Thiem, runner-up in the last two years at Roland Garros.
“It’s going to be a crazy experience,” said the 20-year-old Gaston, ranked 239th.
Wawrinka won the French Open in 2015.
In another third-round match, it took 36 points in a marathon third-set tiebreaker for Lorenzo Sonego to finally shake off the 27th-seeded American Taylor Fritz.
Sonego eventually won the tiebreaker in the 1-hour, 18-minute third set and the match 7-6 (5), 6-3, 7-6 (17).
He was among five Italian men in the third round at Roland Garros, an Open Era record at a Grand Slam.
