Follow The Athletic’s French Open coverageWelcome to the French Open briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories on each day of the tournament.On Day 1, a landmark Roland Garros moment for the U.S. was double-edged, a rising talent made a statement and a Frenchman was almost caught short on the court.How did American men’s tennis take a step forward?American men logged a nifty milestone in Paris Sunday. Wild card Nishesh Basavareddy won his first-round match 7-6(5), 7-6(5), 6-7(9), 6-1, to notch the first victory for an American man over a top-10 opponent at the French Open since 2000.The only problem? Basavareddy’s opponent was a compatriot: No. 7 seed Taylor Fritz.Their match was just Fritz’s second since returning from a two-month stint rehabbing chronic tendinitis in his knee. Returning on red clay, Fritz’s worst surface, was always going to be a challenge, and 21-year-old Basavareddy made the most of Fritz’s rustiness.Basavareddy fed Fritz a steady diet of drop shots that gave the 28-year-old no rhythm to work with and had him visibly frustrated on court.“Typically when someone is drop-shotting me too much, I kind of just tell myself, ‘OK, I need to hit the ball deeper,” Fritz said in his news conference.“He was hitting insane drop shots, like, off balls that were landing on the baseline. He killed me with that, and there’s not really much I can do about it.”Fritz said he felt he played better than last year, which saw another first-round loss to Germany’s Daniel Altmaier. A bonus of his early exit is that he’ll get to go home and focus more on strengthening his knee ahead of the grass court season, where the slippery surface could be tricky.Basavareddy, meanwhile, earned his first top-10 victory — and the crowd’s affection along the way. They chanted his name at different times throughout the match, encouraging the underdog and giving him a standing ovation when he won. The applause reached fever-pitch when Basavareddy thanked the crowd in French during his winner’s speech.He picked up the language not during the two years he spent at Stanford, but through five months of lessons when Frenchman Gilles Cervara was his coach earlier this year. He seems to be a quick study. — Ava Wallace How did Hailey Baptiste make a statement?At this French Open, there are two surefire ways of seeing that Hailey Baptiste is on the rise.She is seeded for the first time at a Grand Slam, for one.The other? After years of buying her match clothes from Nike herself, the sports-apparel behemoth signed the 24-year-old to a sponsorship.Baptiste wore the swoosh well Sunday, rescuing her first-round match against 2021 French Open and 2024 Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejčíková from two match points down, to win 6-7(7), 7-6(6), 6-2, in 2 hours and 53 minutes of unseasonably hot, sticky weather.Baptiste’s aggression and bold shotmaking was a key to the match, same as it was last month at the Madrid Open, when she saved six match points to beat world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka.The American was a break down in the second set before she regained focus and raised her energy, but Krejčíková saved a pair of set points to force a tiebreak. Then, from double-match-point up, Krejčíková whiffed a pair of forehands back-to-back to hand Baptiste an escape path, and the American took the third set with ease.“I just refuse to, you know, let myself be the reason that I lose a match,” Baptiste said in a news conference. “I’m really focusing on being mentally strong and very positive even in the very tight, close moments.”Baptiste has plenty of reasons to be positive lately. Her deal with Nike, first reported by Hard Court, is a career milestone that means she will no longer be shelling out for clothes herself (or, as she said Sunday, by using a connection through her good buddy Frances Tiafoe, who was a Nike athlete for years before he signed on with Lululemon).“I actually didn’t have any kind of deal with them before. I was just buying clothes,” Baptiste said.“But, yeah, I mean, it’s just a brand that I really love and I’ve always worn since I was younger. It’s just what I was comfortable in. Being with them officially now is very special to me, and it’s something — it was a big goal of mine this year that I worked for it, and I earned it. So I’m really happy about it.”Her win Sunday was a nice bit of news for the brand, after there was some recurring hubbub about Aryna Sabalenka’s kits. World No. 88 Oksana Selekhmeteva was playing her first-round match against Marta Kostyuk in the same dress Aryna Sabalenka is meant to wear at Roland Garros. Fans perceived it as the latest of an ongoing series of slights from Nike toward Sabalenka that another player debuted the look first, but Sabalenka’s dress is available for any player to purchase online.— Ava WallaceWhat should a tennis player do when nature calls?For the second Grand Slam running, Day 1 saw a player sprinting off court to use the toilet.At the Australian Open, Italy’s Flavio Cobolli was hampered by what he called “watery diarrhea” during an upset defeat to Arthur Fery. Sunday at Roland Garros, the French world No. 135 Arthur Géa was even more direct early in a 6-3, 7-6(3), 6-0 loss to No. 13 seed Karen Khachanov.Down 4-1 in the first set, Géa informed the umpire that he desperately needed the toilet, and was worried what might happen if he didn’t leave the court. He chose to express that need more directly to the chair umpire, after first checking if he spoke French.“I have the s–––s,” Géa said in French. “I need to go to the toilets, I can’t move anymore. I’m going to s––– on the court.”Arthur Géa quickly came back down to earth early in his first-round match at the French Open. (Aurelien Morissard / Associated Press)Normally, players can only leave the court for a medical issue during a change of ends at the end of a set, or after an odd number of games has been completed. With the scoreline about to tick over to either 4-2 or 5-1, Géa appeared unable to relieve himself.But having held for 4-2 after calling for the doctor, Géa ran off court as quickly as he could, returning a few minutes later.On a hot day pushing 90 degrees fahrenheit, Géa said in a news conference that he had felt unwell earlier that morning.“During the match it was even worse, because it was a bit hot, and I had to go to the toilet really quick. They didn’t allow it, so I was asking the referee because I was really, really bad, and then the doctor came and obviously I could go,” Géa said in a post-match news conference.Géa was told he could leave at the unusual time, he said, “because it’s medical circumstances.” He was given medicine to stop him needing to go again, which helped but left him with stomach pain.It’s surely a coincidence that two consecutive Slams start this way. Or perhaps it is not. In a clip posted by Ultimate Tennis Showdown, Adrian Mannarino, Richard Gasquet and David Goffin discuss how the first day of a major is often characterized by long queues of nervous players waiting to use the toilet.