Buoyed on by a partisan home crowd and leading Andy Murray two sets to love on Roland Garros’s biggest stage last month is a far cry from Roehampton’s Court 12 for Frenchman Mathias Bourgue.
As a 22-year-old wild card, he would ultimately fall short against the British No.1 in that second-round battle.
So it was back to the Challenger level before his opening round Wimbledon qualifying match against Jordi Samper-Montana on Monday.
The Spaniard, ranked No.208 and Bourgue, at No.183, had met once before and the reward when the Frenchman prevailed last time was the aforementioned clash with Murray in Paris.
On the grass, he ensured the outcome against Samper-Montana would be the same – this time a 6-4, 7-5 victory.
“It was weird because I played him in the first round of the French Open. I knew it was going to be a tough fight and that’s what happened,” Bourgue said.
“Now I’m back on the Challenger Tour because I don’t have the ranking for the main draw of Grand Slams and the ATP Tour. That’s the way I have to go.”
He would need to win through two more rounds of qualifying before any chance of a rematch with Murray in a major.
And while there was obvious disappointment at losing that Roland Garros clash in five, it was enough to instill belief in his ability.
“I think I opened the door,” he said. “It means I can play that good level so that’s it. I just have to improve my game every day to try to find again this kind of level.”
Bourgue will meet German No.23 seed Tobias Kamke next, a 7-6(3), 6-2 winner over Serb Marko Tepavac.
Capping a perfect day for his compatriots, Bourge was the last of four Frenchman to advance.
Former world No.35 Edouard Roger-Vasselin carried momentum from a deep run in doubles at Queen’s to get his Wimbledon singles qualifying off to a winning start.
The 32-year-old posted his first singles win on grass for the season with a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Colombian Eduardo Struvay once the covers finally lifted after a lengthy rain delay.
The Frenchman’s best results in the past two years have come in doubles in tandem with countryman Julien Benneteau.
The 2014 Roland Garros champions reached the semi-finals together at Queen’s last week and Roger-Vasselin found the match-play invaluable in such a limited grass-court season coming into his Roehampton campaign.
“Definitely helped,” he said. “I’ve been playing a week already with the beautiful courts at Queen’s so yeah, I felt very good on the grass.
“I don’t know about my opponent whether he played on the grass already or not but yeah, definitely it helped me a lot.”
He booked a second-round qualifying clash with German Julian Reister who posted the first win of the day, racing past Brazilian 18th seed Thiago Monteiro 6-0, 6-4.
The youngest of the four Frenchmen, No.29 seed Quentin Halys, landed a 6-0, 6-1 win over Chilean Hans Podlipnik-Castillo.
The 19-year-old had made a strong start to his grass-court season already with a run to the quarter-finals of the Aegon Ilkley Trophy Challenger last week before setting up a second-round date with China’s Zhe Li, a 6-2, 7-5 winner over Dmitry Popko.
Alexandre Sidorenko joined his countrymen with a harder-fought 7-6(6), 3-6, 6-3 win over Italy’s Federico Gaio. His next opponent will be Slovak No.11 seed Lukas Lacko, who advanced with a 6-4, 6-2 win over Kazakh Aleksandr Nedovyesov.
In other results, Japan’s No.12 seed Yoshihito Nishioka easily accounted for Kazakhstan’s Andrey Golubev to set up a second-round qualifying match with Portugal’s Frederico Ferreira Silva, a 7-6(4), 6-7(3), 6-2 winner against Slovak Norbert Gombos.