Andy Murray's goodbye, Iga Swiatek's shock loss bookend busy Olympic Thursday in Paris

WATCH: Jon Wertheim on Andy Murray's retirement from tennis ⤴️

For tennis fans, the Olympic event in Paris has felt a little like entering an alternate universe. We know we’re at Roland Garros, but we’re not used to seeing the courts draped in blue, and the stands full of happy, singing, dancing—and only occasionally booing—sports fans from around the world.

That vive la différence mindset has extended to the players themselves, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. We saw a leaping and laughing Andy Murray show more upbeat energy during his doubles matches with fellow Brit Dan Evans than we normally see from him in an entire season. And who knew that ultra-chill Emma Navarro harbored so much animus toward her conqueror, Zheng Qinwen? The pressure of playing for medals, in a once-every-four-year event, can do funny things to people.

Here’s a look at how a busy Thursday went in Paris. There was one shocker of a result, two vintage performances, and a good-bye.

At this point, nobody knows the pressure of the Games better than Iga Swiatek. Her early loss in Tokyo in 2021 left her in tears, and haunted her afterward—she said she never wanted to feel that way again. Most of us thought she wouldn’t have to worry about a repeat in 2024. Her favorite surface is clay, her career record at Roland Garros was 35-2, and her biggest rival of recent years, Aryna Sabalenka, wasn’t in the tournament.

But Zheng Qinwen was. The 21-year-old from China is one of the few players who had taken a set from Swiatek at Roland Garros, and last year she showed how much international team competition means to her when she won gold at the Asian Games. Zheng was also coming off two straight semi-miraculous marathon wins, over Navarro and Angelique Kerber. She may have been tired against Swiatek, but she also must have felt like she could was (a) playing with house money, and (b) could extricate herself from any situation.

Maybe more important, Zheng is one of the few players with the physical talents to stay with Swiatek on a clay court. She tracked down enough of the Pole’s ground strokes to draw errors from her. She matched Swiatek’s power from the backhand side. And her often-erratic serve clicked in right when she needed it, late in the second set.

Swiatek was 6-0 against Zheng before this match, but she was the one who was frustrated and pulling the trigger too soon. She made 36 unforced errors, committed five double faults, was broken early and lost the first set 6-2.

The biggest surprise, though, came in the second set, when she couldn’t hold a two-break lead. As she stepped up to serve at 4-0, a decider looked inevitable. Swiatek was controlling the points, and the crowd was chanting her name. The Iga train looked like it was about to leave the station again. Instead, it derailed entirely. She made two routine errors, and gave Zheng, who was still fist-pumping despite the deficit, just enough hope that the second set was still in play. From there Zheng’s improved first serve and heavy ground strokes took over, while Swiatek never found the range, especially with her favorite shot, her two-handed backhand.

“I had a hole in my backhand,” a tearful Swiatek told Eurosport Poland, while citing the difficulty of playing big matches on back-to-back days this week.

While the No. 1 woman couldn’t hold off her challenger in Chatrier, the No. 1 and No. 2 men, Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz, each found a way to escape a hot-hitting opponent. And each did it in his own characteristic way.

“Characteristic” for Alcaraz means spectacular, of course, and that’s exactly how he saved the second set against Tommy Paul in their quarterfinal. The American broke early, went up 3-0, and served for a decider 5-3. But rather than allow the match to go three, the way he did twice against Paul last summer, Alcaraz reined in his errors and forced the set to a tiebreaker.

There, after a frenzied first 11 points between two of the tour’s best athletes, Paul reached set point. And that’s when Alcaraz took his athleticism to a place where Paul couldn’t go. The Spaniard, forced deep into his forehand corner, sprinted on a diagonal across the court in time to get a Paul drop volley and bunt a winning pass up the line. The set was saved, and a few points later the match was his.

With No. 2 Alcaraz safely in the semis, it was No. 1 Djokovic’s turn to make a second-set comeback and sneak past an inspired opponent. It came against Stefanos Tsitsipas, who jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the second, while Djokovic struggled with his recently repaired right knee. The Serb slipped early in the set, called the trainer, and appeared ready to head to a third.

Taking half steps with his right leg...not his normal stride. Jimmy Arias, commentating Djokovic's quarterfinal match

But anyone who has watched Djokovic over the past 20 years knows that the moment he seems to pull the mental ripcord is the moment when he’s most dangerous. He relaxes just enough to let his natural ball-striking talent flow, and the result is usually a blizzard of winners. While Djokovic didn’t paint the lines against Tsitsipas, he hung on by a thread, and kept hanging on through tight game after tight game. He saved break points at 1-4, and three set points. By the time the two reached a tiebreaker, he was moving better and back in control.

Afterward, though, Djokovic sounded a hint of caution. At Roland Garros, his torn meniscus was only revealed after a match; he’ll have to hope the same thing doesn’t happen when he has it looked at tonight.

Andy Murray had to go down with his country, didn’t he?

From the very start of his career, as a teenager in 2005, he had shouldered the burden of trying to become the first man from Great Britain to win Wimbledon since Fred Perry in 1938. He took on that assignment with patience and conscientiousness, and eight years later, after many agonizing late-Slam losses to the Big Three, he made it happen.

Murray’s breakthrough during that stretch also came in service to his country, at the 2012 Olympics, when he blitzed past Roger Federer in three quick sets for the gold medal. In 2015, he almost singlehandedly led the British Davis Cup team to its first title since the 1930s, and the next year he brought home another Wimbledon, another Olympic gold, and became the first and only British man to reach No. 1 in the rankings.

On Thursday, Murray’s career ended at yet another Olympics, beside his doubles partner Evans. It was probably as close to a storybook final run as they were going to get. They won two matches after saving match points—seven in all—and in Thursday they gave the packed house in Lenglen another thrill when they broke Tommy Paul and Taylor Fritz late in their quarterfinal.

“The last couple of weeks have been brilliant,” Murray told NBC. “It’s such a special event to be around the athletes, people turning each other on.”

“I gave all I could,” he said of his career.

This week Murray gave us what we want from every legendary competitor: One final roar.