French Open: Cameron Norrie goes down fighting in second-round defeat by Lucas Pouille

Cameron Norrie’s debut on the centre court at any of the four Grand Slam tournaments ended in defeat here on Thursday but the 22-year-old Briton will take plenty of encouragement from his first season on the European clay-court circuit.

Norrie, who started playing professional tennis only last summer after spending the previous three years playing college tennis in the United States, was beaten 6-2, 6-4, 5-7, 7-6 by France’s Lucas Pouille when their French Open second-round match resumed on Court Philippe Chatrier.

Pouille is France’s best player, but the 24-year-old world No 16 was pushed all the way by Norrie, who failed to take a set point in the fourth set and went on to lose the tie-break 7-3.

Considering that Norrie had barely had any experience playing on red European clay before this year, the last four months represent enormous progress by the world No 85, who is expected to climb several more places in the next updated rankings list. Until this week, when he broke into the top 100 for the first time, Norrie had never played in the main draw here.

“I fought hard and played really well and I'm proud of myself,” Norrie said afterwards. “Overall it was a great experience to play on the big stage. I like playing on the big stage. I think I learned a lot from the match.

“I think he was a little bit more experienced than me. He's obviously played on that court a bunch of times. It was great exposure for me and I think I'm going to use the experience to my advantage in the future.”

This was only Norrie’s third appearance in the main draw of a Grand Slam event. He played on Court 2 in his only appearance at Wimbledon last summer, when he lost to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, and on outside courts when he beat Dmitry Tursunov and then lost to Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open.

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The match had been held over from Wednesday evening, bad light having ended play at 9.42pm just after Norrie had won the third set. It had been an admirable fightback by the Briton, who had been given medication by the tournament doctor after feeling unwell.

More than 16 hours later play resumed shortly after 2pm. With the sun shining brightly and only a light breeze blowing, the conditions could hardly have been bettered.

A loose forehand by Norrie gave Pouille a break point in the opening game of the fourth set, but the Briton saved it with a service winner and went on to hold serve with an ace. It was certainly a better start than the previous evening, when Norrie had been broken in the opening game.

At 3-3 Norrie went 15-40 down on his serve but held firm once again with some resolute defence. His big chance came when Pouille put a forehand in the net to go set point down as he served at 4-5. Pouille saved it with an ace, held serve and then broke in the next game with a big forehand winner.

Serving for the match, however, Pouille appeared to tighten up and Norrie broke back as the Frenchman missed an easy volley and then netted a backhand.

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Norrie lost the first two points of the ensuing tie-break, recovered to 3-3 but went 3-5 down when he put a loose backhand in the net. Pouille went to match point when Norrie hit a winning volley but lost the point – correctly – because his foot had touched the bottom of the net. Pouille took his chance immediately as Norrie’s forehand return missed the target.

Asked what he had learned from his experience here, Norrie said: “I think it’s just being able to play against the best guys in the world and just having that exposure, having all the cameras there, and playing on the bigger courts and just playing on clay in general.

“There were also a couple of crucial things in the match. He obviously played a little bit more aggressively than me in the bigger moments and that managed to get him through it. I think if I played the match again, I would probably play a little more aggressively in the bigger moments and hit a little more to his backhand.”

Norrie explained that he had started to suffer with stomach cramps early on the previous evening. “It was kind of throughout the whole match yesterday,” he said. “I was pretty pumped to get off the court last night.

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“But actually today I felt better and played a lot better and I was able to really focus on my tennis. Whereas yesterday I was side-tracked and couldn't really focus too much on my game plan and my tennis.”

He added: “I managed to tough out a couple of holds last night and managed to break him in the end. It was nice to still be in the match last night and give myself another chance, but all credit to him. He played really, really well today. I fought hard and played some of my best tennis today. I'm just proud of how I fought and how I dealt with everything.”

Pouille described Norrie as “a great player” and added: “I'm sure his ranking will be better and better the next coming months and I'm sure he has a good future.”

Norrie was told afterwards that a radio reporter working here had referred to him as “Chuck Norris”. Asked what he thought about being mistaken for the American actor and martial arts specialist, Norrie said: “I know he's pretty famous. When I went to Argentina for pre-season, they actually thought my name was Chuck Norris at the team I played for. It was pretty funny. I guess it's an honour to be compared to him.”