Toast of Paris: Some competitors couldn’t take the heat associated with this Grand Slam tennis tournament

Paris is forever hot, be it fashion or food, but it was Mother Nature’s smoldering hand on the tennis court that was the center of all talk around the City of Light during the first week of the French Open.

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Norway’s Casper Ruud, 27, saying he had “kind of a heatstroke feeling,” proclaimed that playing in the blistering heat at Roland Garros left him feeling “like a zombie.”

Czechia’s Jakub Mensikm Mensik, 20, on Wednesday crumpled up on the court like a Peugeot crash-test dummy upon clinching his fifth-set tiebreaker (13-11) vs. Argentina’s Mariano Navone. The grinding second-round match on the court-turned-kiln lasted 4 hours 41 minutes, enough time for elite marathoners to rip off a rare Hopkinton-Boston round trip (sun and clouds permitting).

Temperatures soared into the mid-90s during the Mensik-Navone match. When it was over, medics offered the staggered Mensik a wheelchair to lug him off to the locker room. He straightened up, gingerly, and shuffled back on his own.

“Insane to play in this weather,” noted Mensik. “In this heat, and in these conditions, it’s insane.” He added a plea for organizers at least to allow more recovery time on changeovers.

Paris all week was ablaze with the highest May temperatures on record. The late Bud Collins, for decades the Globe’s grand master of tennis prose, would have dubbed it the Great Balls of Fire Open. What a field day for the heat.

The biggest stunner in the sun came Thursday. Italian superstar Jannik Sinner, 24, the No. 1 seed and a massive favorite to complete his career grand slam, looked drained and a bit ’round the bend in the late stages of a second-round loss to Juan Manuel Cerundolo, a 24-year-old Argentine lefthander.

Sinner arrived in Paris having won 30 consecutive matches over the last three months and was but a minute or two from bagging the win in straight sets in a tidy time of less than two hours.

And then, le deluge. Cerundolo flipped the script on the stumbling, addled-looking Sinner in the third set for a 7-5 win, followed by a pair of easy 6-1 putts in the fourth and fifth. Game, set, match for the stunned Cerundolo.

“I don’t know what happened,” noted Cerundolo, equally gobsmacked over the win as everyone else at Stade Roland Garros.

Sinner, typically a stealthy and artistic attacker, grew increasingly unsteady on his feet from late in that third set. It was 84 degrees at the start of the match and simmered its way up to 90 by the end.

“Warm,” offered Sinner in his post-match debrief, “but not crazy warm. I felt like it was quite OK to play.”

His game spoke otherwise, emphatically. Sinner suddenly looked like he was a ball-whiffing duffer at the Knights of Columbus age 60-plus pickleball tournament. The sun transformed the court’s trademark red clay into a baked flambé, compliments of a deadly heat dome fueled by warm air that swept in from northern Africa.

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During one stretch of Sinner’s meltdown, he lost 18 consecutive points. He limped around the courts, hunkered over at the waist in an attempt to summon strength. He sought respite with ice packs and a hand-held fan during changeovers. Nothing got him going.

Ice packs, pressed to cheeks and across necks, along with tiny misting fans, were the tourney’s images of the week.

A creative Coco Gauff arrived courtside with spare rackets stored in a cooler, keeping strings taut for sharper serves and returns. Intense sun can turn strings to mush.

“She wanted them safe,” former Wimbledon finalist (2013) Sabine Lisicki explained on Instagram, “and put them in the fridge.”

Overexposure to the sun has a way of getting to body and mind. It beats on muscles and tendons, fogs the brain, steals thought. Young, elite pros might think they can outduel the shots the sun fires their way from 93 million miles out there. But until further notice, the sun owns the baseline.

Amid the unremitting heat, which was finally due to break following Saturday’s matches, Roland Garros did deliver one very cool story — the emergence of yet another potential star Spaniard, 19-year-old Rafael Jodar from Madrid.

Revived chants of “Vamos, Rafa!” erupted around the stadium as Jodar, who played one sensational season at the University of Virginia, swatted his way through early-round triumphs.

Rafael Nadal — the famous “Vamos, Rafa!” — retired two years ago after winning an astounding 14 times at the French Open and heading off to the setting sun with some $135 million in cool cash winnings.

Virtually unknown to anyone other than the true tennis cognoscenti less than a year ago, the New Rafa enjoyed a meteoric run in recent months and arrived in Paris ranked No. 29 and was awarded a seed. We don’t need Paris Hilton to tell us that’s hot.

Before getting fried, Sinner was the odds-on favorite to add the French to his trophy case. He was at the doorstep in Paris last year, only to be edged out in the final by Carlos Alcaraz in a five-set nailbiter. With power-hitting Alcaraz out because of a wrist injury, Sinner was poised for what many felt would be a cakewalk on the red velvet clay.

Sinner’s loss swung the odds to No. 2 seed Alexander Zverev, the 29-year-old German who was a finalist in 2024. Next on the board was Novak Djokovic, owner of three French wins among his record 24 major titles. With temperatures again in the low 90s, he was booted in a five-set thriller on Friday, with 19-year-old Joao Fonseca rallying after losing the first two sets. The Brazilian righthander clinched a dramatic 7-5 win in the fifth set, blowing three consecutive aces by an exhausted Djokovic.

Now Sinner is a free man in Paris, unfettered and alive, able to turn his thoughts to the next big one, Wimbledon (June 29-July 12). He triumphed at the All England Club last year and can look forward to the cool, green grass of London.

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Unless, of course, the sun cares to have a word.