He is undoubtedly going through the best period of his career. After winning his first title in Metz at the end of 2024, Benjamin Bonzi will be in the 3rd round of the Australian Open, thus equaling his best Grand Slam performance already achieved in Melbourne two years ago (and at the US Open still in 2023 ). To achieve this, the Frenchman, 64th player in the world, got the better of the Italian “lucky loser” Francesco Passaro in four sets (6-2, 6-4, 3-6, 6-4) and 2h10 on court 13 To join the second week of a Major for the first time in his career, he has a meeting with Jiri Lehecka who benefited from the abandonment of Hugo Gaston.
This Wednesday, Bonzi ran his boat like an old hand. He relied on consistency against an opponent who hit twice as many winning shots as him, but also committed double the number of unforced errors. If the game got complicated in the 3rd and 4th sets for the Frenchman, he knew how to bide his time to conclude the restart against the Italian who had benefited from the abandonment of Grigor Dimitrov in the previous round.
The challenge already seemed very complicated for him. But diminished, Hugo Gaston had no chance of going further in this Australian Open. Opposed to a player in form in the person of Jiri Lehecka, recently titled in Brisbane and 29th in the world, the French left-hander did not finish the game, giving up when he was trailing by a set and a break (6-3, 3-1 ab.) after 57 minutes of play.
