2026 Roland Garros SF Recap, Zverev Dominates & Chwalinska’s Fairytale | Something Major | EP 182

**Sam Querrey** (0:00)
As the semi-finals comes to an end, the sun sets behind the city of love. The sands shimmers as we are only a couple days away from crowning two new champions at Roland Garros. The Parisian crowd takes one last puff of their cigarette as they walk home to their non-air-conditioned apartment. They will return tomorrow to watch an unprecedented final between Chwalinska and Andreeva, and then Cobolli and Zverev.
Welcome back, I'm Sam Querrey, joined by John Isner and Steve Johnson.

**John Isner** (0:34)
That's for the non-air-conditioned apartments genius.

**Sam Querrey** (0:39)
All right, that was it. Thanks also to Tennis Channel for the footage. We didn't actually jack the footage from them, but they let us use it. A cool promo, so thanks to them for that. And with that, welcome back to Something Major.
I got John Isner and myself today. Stevie is busy, our Cal Ripken, a very unprecedented show that Stevie can't attend to.

**John Isner** (1:06)
He tried, he was trying to make it work, right? You know, and if this match or non-match that we're gonna talk about went long, there was a chance Stevie can make it, but we gotta get to bed here.

**Sam Querrey** (1:21)
We do. It's always 830 in Paris, early night for us, but also Charlie Fox and of course the Suits at SIFT are with us as always.

**John Isner** (1:31)
And producer Mike.

**Sam Querrey** (1:32)
Yeah, producer Mike, big shout out producer Mike.
All right, before we get into the matches, I wanna talk bigger picture real quick about Roland Garros. As exciting as week one was with the center match, the Djokovic-Fonseca match, all the upsets. People always love the upsets and tell what comes on the other side of an upset.

**John Isner** (1:53)
Good call, Sam.

**Sam Querrey** (1:54)
The last two days sucked. Like these matches weren't that exciting.
Not that we didn't have exciting players, but the tournament has not been that fun the last three days. Would you agree, John?

**John Isner** (2:07)
It's been, yeah, the weather hasn't been, it's been good for us in the studio because we're not sweating, but the weather hasn't made for good tennis and it's just been kind of ugly and choppy out there and the matches have kind of sucked and as far as Grand Slam, late in Grand Slam matches can go, right? We're not, you know, these guys are incredible. You guys and women, they're absolutely incredible. But it's not what we're accustomed to seeing in the last 10 Grand Slams or something.

**Sam Querrey** (2:37)
So, no, this podcast will probably be terrible today too. We don't have the matches to talk about.

**John Isner** (2:42)
Yeah, I mean, the matches weren't drama filled. I'm with you, Sam, for sure.

**Sam Querrey** (2:48)
So let's talk about the first one that wasn't a match. We were on the set at TNT, right? This match was between Arnaldi and Cobolli was supposed to start at 7 p.m. Parisian time. First match ends, John and I are on the set with Adam Lefko, Caroline Wozniacki, Sloan Stephens and Andre Agassi. Side note, Agassi has been great on the desk. Like his insight and his stories, he's like dialed in to like guys games and what's going on in tennis. But it's probably 6.30. We're probably 30 minutes away from the match starting. Lefko's kind of, hey, everyone quiet. And he's like breaking news.
Arnaldi is pulling out of the semi-finals. He's got an illness or a virus. Went to the Arnaldi press conference, said he woke up in the middle of the night, sick, was throwing up, woke up, kind of went back to bed, had some water this morning, throwing up again at 6, 7 a.m. Obviously, he waited as long as he could to see if he could get better because he didn't pull out till 30 minutes before the match. If he was, you know, some other injury or was really, really, really bad, he would have pulled out this morning. But I think he did everything he could do to try to get his body ready to play tonight. And the sickness, the illness, which we don't necessarily know what it was, was too much, but huge bummer when you get a pullout in the semifinal of a slam. Brutal.

**John Isner** (4:06)
I mean, we saw it at Wimbledon with Rafa four or five years ago against Curios. Rafa had that like knockdown drag out match against Fritz and like limped across the finish line, but couldn't make the court. Yeah, this is tough. It's tough for everyone. I mean, the match for tennis fans wasn't like the best grand slam semifinal, right? But then it doesn't even happen. So it leads me to believe that he was really sick and he needs his legs to be able to win another three out of five set match. Arnaldi had spent 19 and a half hours on court just to get to the semifinal. And that is with a quarterfinal retirement from Berettini.