Gael Monfils said goodbye to Grand Slam tennis on Thursday night, September 3, in the same place where he so often turned effort into theatre. Learner Tien won 6-3, 6-4, 6-3 in the US Open second round, but Louis Armstrong Stadium saved its longest applause for the 40-year-old Frenchman, who was playing his 18th and final New York campaign.
The score reflected Tien’s precision. The American saved a break point in the fifth game of the opening set and broke in the next. In the second, he moved ahead 4-3 with another break and defended three Monfils opportunities in the following game. Whenever the Frenchman tried to summon another comeback, the ball kept returning one more time. After two sets, Tien had made 14 unforced errors to Monfils’ 36.
The last memory, however, will not be a ledger of errors. With Monfils serving at 2-2 in the third set, the crowd began repeating his name. He found a backhand winner down the line and roared with them. For a few seconds, a tired body, an accelerated ball and the voice of the audience formed the same combination that defined his life on tour.
Tien broke soon afterwards, went ahead 4-3 and completed the straight-sets victory. The 20-year-old’s composure did not diminish the player being honoured; it gave the goodbye an opponent fully committed to the present. Less than a month earlier in Montreal, Tien had also beaten Monfils and then asked him for an autograph. The admirer became a rival again, and the two embraced when the final point made the ending official.
Monfils’ US Open story began in 2005 with a five-set battle against Novak Djokovic. His New York peak came in 2016, when he reached the semifinals without dropping a set before meeting the Serbian again. Across the years, though, the relationship was defined less by one run than by the expectation created whenever Monfils had room to sprint, improvise and challenge the court’s geometry.
There was one final gift before the farewell. Two days earlier, on his 40th birthday, Monfils rallied past Adolfo Daniel Vallejo 2-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-0. That celebration earned him one more meeting with New York and ensured that his final Grand Slam did not finish in the opening round, but on a full stage that understood the moment.
With the microphone after the loss, Monfils thanked the crowd and called playing before them “an absolute honor.” The words did not turn the night into a heavy ceremony. The Frenchman smiled, listened to the stadium and left the court surrounded by the same affection he had received for nearly two decades.
The Grand Slam farewell is not yet the farewell to tennis. Monfils plans to retire at the end of the 2026 season. For the following year, he announced an unlikely but concrete change: he will work in wealth management for a Swiss company. After a professional life built around movement, the next chapter will begin in an office — with New York preserved as one of his homes in the sport.
Sources consulted: the US Open/USTA and ATP Tour. Reporting updated September 4, 2026.