London (AFP)

Lucas Pouille and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga qualified Thursday for the third round of Wimbledon, unlike Gilles Simon and the last French Pauline Parmentier and Kristina Mladenovic, all eliminated.

The next stage will be the hardest for both Tricolores in contention on Saturday: Puglie will meet Roger Federer while Tsonga inherited Rafael Nadal, ten times winners of the event between them.

While waiting to face the legends, the French were convincing Thursday.

Puglia (27th) largely dominated his friend Grégoire Barrère (117th), 6-1, 7-6 (7/0), 6-4. The recent semi-finalist of the Australian Open ran out of trouble in a particular match against one of his training partners.

Tsonga (72) did not shudder against Lithuanian Ricardas Berankis (77), 7-6, 6-3, 6-3. Le Manceau, who only recovered in May following a six-month back-to-back operation, confirmed his good turf provisions after recently pushing Federer to his halves in Halle.

After a first lap close to the farce that had lasted only 58 minutes, where Bernard Tomic had sometimes played while walking, Tsonga has passed his second round with an opponent deemed solid on the surface.

Tsonga will then face Nadal on Saturday, after the victory of the Spaniard on the hot Nick Kyrgios after an epic and tense match.

- Simon under antibiotics -

For Simon, however, the adventure stops there. Despite the illness, the Queen, the finalist unfortunate Queen's, went to the end of his strength to fight 3 h 42 min and finally lose in five sets against Tennys Sandgren, 6-2, 6-3, 4-6 , 3-6, 8-6.

If he sank in the first two sets against the 94th world, Simon got up to take the next two rounds. Dominator, the French, seeded N.20, even served for the match ... before collapsing under the powerful blows of a Sandgren much more fit.

"I'm sick, I did not sleep at night, it was hard," said Simon, who saw the doctor before the start of the match.

"I tried, I thought it was going to end quickly because it's not great, so going back like that, getting into a position and losing is really awful," he added. visibly weakened.

There will also be no French in the third round of Wimbledon: Kristina Mladenovic and Pauline Parmentier, the last two Tricolores in the running, were eliminated Thursday after their respective defeats against Petra Kvitova and Carla Suarez Navarro.

- "Really hard draw" -

Mladenovic did not hold up the shock, despite a very good start and three set balls against the Czech double winner of Wimbledon (2011, 2014), winner in two sets 7-5, 6-2.

The French will inevitably feed some regrets after this match: she started the two sets by a break without reaching a conclusion against the finalist of the last Australian Open, which has not yet abandoned a set in seven confrontations.

"Sometimes she has bad days, but apparently against me no," said Mladenovic. "It's two Wimbledon in a row where I feel I have a good level of play. (...) I tell myself that my draw was really hard."

"Kiki", who has refused Andy Murray's proposal to play the mixed doubles, will now focus on the women's double, which she dominates just ahead of her Hungarian partner Timea Babos.

Parmentier, she lost in a tense encounter with the top-seeded N.30, 7-6 (7-2), 7-6 (7/4).

If the North has often matched the Spanish, she has systematically cracked in tie-breaks.

Much more offensive with seven aces and 29 winning strokes, it has lost some marks to let go in important moments (five double faults and especially 33 unforced errors).

? 2019 AFP