Articles by Steve Tignor

Federer, Osaka in action: Previewing this week's grass-court events

Sun, 16 Jun 2019 21:54:00 +0000

Grass season arrives in a 24-hour flash. One day we’re watching the players slide across red clay in Paris; the next we’re watching them slip across green turf in England, and Germany. After a week, many of those players have had a chance to grow accustomed to the new surface under their feet. Now, as the tournaments offer more ranking points, and Wimbledon gets a little closer, a new group of Top 10 pros will join them. Here’s a look at week two of the grass season; savor the time of year while it lasts, because it will be over the same way it came: In a flash.

Noventi Open (ATP)

Halle, Germany

$2,500,000; 500 ranking points

Grass

Draw is here

After 25 years as the Gerry Weber Open, Halle has a new name, courtesy of a venture-capital firm based in California. But everything else about this 500-level tune-up looks familiar. Roger Federer, who is going for his 10th title at the event, is the top seed. Alexander Zverev, the German native who reached the finals in 2016 and 2017, is the No. 2 seed. Last year’s champ, Borna Coric, is the No. 4 seed.

Federer lost to Coric in the Halle final in 2018, and went on to lose in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon. Will his recent run at Roland Garros give him more confidence this time around, or leave him more vulnerable physically? Either way, he’ll be tested this week. Federer starts against John Millman, who beat him at the US Open last year, and then will face either Benoit Paire or Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the second round.

Players of Interest: Matteo Berrettini just won a title in Stuttgart; Jan-Lennard Struff has been one of the year’s pleasant surprises; and Karen Khachanov finally showed signs of life in Paris.

First-round matches to watch:

Paire vs. Tsonga

Gael Monfils vs. Pierre-Hugues Herbert

Fever-Tree Championships (ATP)

London

$2,500,000; 500 ranking points

Grass

Draw is here

The headline news here comes from the doubles draw: Andy Murray, who all but hung up his racquet in January, will return, partnered with Feliciano Lopez. They may not last long, considering that they’ve drawn the top seeds, but the sight of Murray on a tennis court, seemingly pain-free, should be cheering to the fans at Queen’s.

As for the singles, the headline name is a less-familiar one, for now anyway: 20-year-old Stefanos Tsitsipas is the top seed, though he likely won’t be the crowd favorite in his opener against Kyle Edmund. The same may go for No. 2 seed Kevin Anderson; last year’s Wimbledon finalist is playing his first tournament since Miami, and he’s going up against another Brit in Cam Norrie.

First-round matches to watch:

Juan Martin del Potro vs. Denis Shapovalov

Grigor Dimitrov vs. Felix Auger-Aliassime

Stan Wawrinka vs. Dan Evans

Underhand servers to watch: Nick Kyrgios and Alexander Bublik

Nature Valley Classic (WTA)

Birmingham, England

$1,000,000; Premier

Grass

Draw is here

As far as powerhouse fields go, Birmingham may take the cake this week. The WTA’s Top 3—Naomi Osaka, Ash Barty, Karolina Pliskova—will all be in attendance, as will Elina Svitolina, Aryna Sabalenka, Jo Konta, Venus Williams, Petra Martic, Julia Goerges, and Qiang Wang

As you might expect from a pre-Wimbledon Premier event, easy first-rounders are hard to come by. Osaka will start her grass season against Maria Sakkari, Barty against grass-lover Donna Vekic, and Konta against Anett Kontaveit.

Mallorca Open (WTA)

Mallorca, Spain

$250,000; International

Grass

Draw is here

WTA International-level fields don’t come much stronger than the one assembled in Mallorca. Defending Wimbledon champion Angelique Kerber is the top seed, and she’s joined by Anastasija Sevastova, Belinda Bencic, Elise Mertens, Amanda Anisimova, Sofia Kenin, Katerina Siniakova, and Carolina Garcia, who won a title on Sunday in Nottingham.

Former No. 1s of Interest:

Maria Sharapova will play her first event since January, while Victoria Azarenka will continue her draw difficulties when she faces off against Garcia in her opener.

The 21 & Under Club: Bianca Andreescu

Sun, 16 Jun 2019 16:29:00 +0000

How do you follow the Greatest Generation? It’s a question tennis has tried to answer for at least a decade. Serena, Roger, Novak, Rafa: all of them are over 30, and they’ve combined to win 75 Grand Slam singles titles—but none of them are going away quietly. When they do, who will fill their very large shoes?

As you’ll see in The 21 & Under Club, the future of tennis is still coming, and coming soon. While it may not produce a 20-Slam winner, it’s clear that the game will be in good hands. Interesting hands, too: one thing we know for sure is that this new generation of players will infuse the tours with a wide and refreshing range of styles, personalities and backgrounds. When the Greatest Generation says goodbye, we can feel good about welcoming this cast of players to the courts.

Canadian tennis is having a moment. Lots of them, actually. At times this spring, it felt as if players from the Maple Leaf nation were having all the moments.

Felix Auger-Aliassime, 18 and seemingly going on 25, reached a final in Rio de Janeiro and a semifinal in Miami, and has made a comet-like race up the rankings. After starting the season at No. 109, he had cracked the Top 30 by the end of April. Along the way, Auger-Aliassime wowed fans and flummoxed veteran opponents with his technical proficiency and emotional self-control. A new FAA was suddenly vying for control of the airspace.

Bianca Andreescu, also 18, somehow managed to top Auger-Aliassime when she beat four Top 20 opponents to win one of the WTA’s most prestigious titles in Indian Wells. She vaulted herself from No. 178 to No. 23, and showed off a canny, wide-ranging game and a theatrical moxy that led The New Yorker’s Gerald Marzorati to say that watching the rookie was “like watching Clayton Kershaw pitch.”

Denis Shapovalov, 19, cheered on his two young compatriots while they stole the headlines from him in Indian Wells. Then he stole them right back in Miami, when he out-gunned fellow Next Gen stars Stefanos Tsitsipas and Frances Tiafoe to reach his first ATP Masters 1000 semifinal. With that result, Shapovalov reached a career-high ranking of No. 20, and reminded everyone that he has the leaping athleticism to someday win major titles.

Milos Raonic, 28, could have been forgiven for feeling like the odd—and old—man out in this youth revolt. But the player who, along with Eugenie Bouchard, put Canadian tennis on the map earlier this decade, and who reached the Wimbledon final as recently as 2016, underwent his own resurgence to start the year. He beat Nick Kyrgios, Stan Wawrinka and Alexander Zverev to reach the Australian Open quarterfinals, then went a round further at Indian Wells. Ranked No. 16.

Raonic remains his country’s best player nearly a decade after his debut By April, Canada, a country of 37 million, had the same number of players—three—in the ATP’s Top 40 as the United States, a country of 327 million. In tennis circles, “O Canada” had turned to “Woah, Canada.”

Which might lead a fan to ask: Why Canada?

Before we try to answer that question, let’s start with a quick quiz: How would you expect the head of Canada’s tennis federation, when asked to exp-lain his country’s sudden rise to powerhouse status in 2019, to respond?

(1) By claiming full credit for it?

(2) By extolling the brilliance of the centralized coaching system he installed a decade ago?

(3) By deflecting all the praise onto the players themselves, and downplaying the federation’s role?

If you chose answer 3, you have a pretty good idea of how things traditionally work north of our border.

“I think, before anything else, you have to acknowledge what the kids and their families have done,” says Michael Downey, president and CEO of Tennis Canada, when asked about the successes of Andreescu, Auger-Aliassime and Shapovalov. “They all took their own pathways.”

There’s no arguing that. In customary Canadian fashion, the country’s players hail from vastly different
backgrounds, and they grew up on both sides of the nation’s Anglo-French divide. Shapovalov was born in Israel and raised outside of Toronto, where he was taught by his mother, Tessa, a high-level player from Russia. Auger-Aliassime, whose father is from Togo, grew up outside of Quebec City and trained in Montreal. Andreescu was born near Toronto, but took up the game at age 7, at a time when she was living with her parents in their native Romania. Raonic was born in Montenegro, is of Serbian descent, and came to Canada at age 3 with his parents. Vasek Pospisil, a Wimbledon doubles champion and former Top 25 singles player, was born in British Columbia to parents who escaped their native Czechoslovakia during the Cold War.

If there’s one thing that unites this diverse group, it’s their status as the children of immigrants. To Downey, this is also what helps them thrive in a global sport, and what makes them truly representative of their country.

“Their parents came to Canada for a better life, and they’ve been shaped by the world,” Downey says.

“I think it’s a reflection of the mosaic nature of Canada. Immigrants hold onto their traditions, and we celebrate them. Tennis is a popular sport in a lot of the countries these kids came from, and they’ve kept up that tradition.”

The playing styles of the Canadian pros are equally heterogenous. From Auger-Aliassime’s textbook precision, to Andreescu’s thoughtful versatility, to Raonic’s serve-based attack, to Shapovalov’s daredevil shotmaking, there’s nothing cookie-cutter or one-dimensional about tennis in Canada. Yet at the same time, there’s nothing unorthodox, either; all of the country’s players are well-schooled in technique.

And that’s where the other side of the Canadian success story begins.

Along with the cultivation of diversity, which comes naturally in such a pro-immigrant country, Tennis Canada also set out to install a centralized national coaching system. The initiative began 15 years ago, when the federation received government funding for a new training center in Montreal, and began searching for someone to run it. The logical choice, for cultural and practical reasons, was to look across the Atlantic to France.

“It’s hard not to see the FFT [French Tennis Federation] as a best-practice example of a national training system,” Downey says. “We thought, ‘Why not go to a country that has done it so well?’”

France has long been known for the quality of its coaching. A high percentage of its population plays the sport, and instructors at all levels must pass a rigorous examination to be certified. The result is a deep well of technical knowledge, and an equally deep appreciation for the history and artistry of the game. While the FFT hasn’t produced dominant champions, it has churned out a long line of stylish, crowd-pleasing, highly individualistic players, from Jo-Wilfried Tsonga to Gael Monfils to Richard Gasquet to Amelie Mauresmo to Alize Cornet.

With that tradition in mind, in 2006 Tennis Canada approached one of the FFT’s leading coaches, Louis Borfiga, about heading up the new national training center in French-speaking Montreal. Borfiga had been instrumental in developing France’s Davis Cup-winning generation—and best of all for Canada, he was ready for a change.

“Louis is a man of few words, but he brings a quiet confidence to everything he does,” Downey says. “He has built a phenomenal team-first culture with the coaches and players at the national center.”

In an interview with Canadian tennis journalist Tom Tebbutt last fall, Borfiga explained his reasons for leaving Paris and starting over in Montreal.

“It was to have a new challenge,” he said, “and also the chance to be the boss and to initiate a policy. As well, it’s obvious that the attraction of Canada was the goodness of the Canadian people. That’s what made me decide, because to have my job you also have to be sentimentally
attached to the country.”

But while you can take the coach out of Paris, you can’t take Paris out of the coach. One of Borfiga’s first and most important moves at Tennis Canada was to install European-style red-clay courts at the training center.

“They were on the second floor of a garage with open doors, and it was windy as hell,” Downey says. “But Louis said, ‘Hey, that’s what the players need to learn to deal with.’”

Borfiga believed that clay, which teaches patience and gives players a chance to learn to construct points, was a good surface for junior development. Auger-Aliassime appears to be in the process of proving him right. This year, the 18-year-old clinched Canada’s Davis Cup qualifying tie on red clay, and reached his first ATP final on the surface, in Rio.

The young Canadians have also benefited from the lineup of coaches that Borfiga has brought from France.

Auger-Aliassime works with Guillaume Marx and Frederic Fontang. Felix and Bianca have both been taught by Andre Labelle, who has a reputation as one of the sport’s best technical instructors. Andreescu is now coached by Sylvain Bruneau, who has been Canada’s Fed Cup captain. When Andreescu looked like she was on the verge of a breakdown in the Indian Wells final, against Angelique Kerber, Bruneau found the perfect positive words to carry her through it.

Has Canada hit upon a system that will keep pumping out world-class players in perpetuity? That’s hard to say. In the 1970s and ’80s, Sweden also seemed to have cracked the junior development code; since 1992, though, the home of Bjorn Borg, Mats Wilander and Stefan Edberg has just a single major singles title to its name.

A system will only take a nation so far; ultimately, it depends on the talent of the players, and their willingness to make the most of it. Right now, Canada’s young pros profit from an mix of competitiveness and camaraderie, which comes with playing for asmall nation (in population) that’s striving to prove itself on a world stage.

“I think competition was a big thing,” Raonic said this spring. “Me and Vasek being the same age, we always competed. And now we have Felix and Denis competing against each other.”

Downey adds, “Felix and Denis trained in different places, but their friendship is what has helped them feed off each other’s success.” Shapovalov agrees: “It’s been kind of almost a rivalry with me and Felix,” he said in Miami, “and I feel like we have been able to thrive on each other’s results and push each other.”

When Andreescu joined Shapovalov and Auger-Aliassime in the spotlight, Canada was no longer the nice little tennis nation up north; it had become a force. As Andreescu said with a grin this spring, “We’re killing it.” Canada’s moment has only just begun.

The 21 & Under Club: Felix Auger-Aliassime

Mon, 10 Jun 2019 19:21:00 +0000

Canadian tennis is having a moment. Lots of them, actually. At times this spring, it felt as if players from the Maple Leaf nation were having all the moments.

Which might lead a fan to ask: Why Canada?

(1) By claiming full credit for it?

(2) By extolling the brilliance of the centralized coaching system he installed a decade ago?

(3) By deflecting all the praise onto the players themselves, and downplaying the federation’s role?

If you chose answer 3, you have a pretty good idea of how things traditionally work north of our border.

There’s no arguing that. In customary Canadian fashion, the country’s players hail from vastly different backgrounds, and they grew up on both sides of the nation’s Anglo-French divide. Shapovalov was born in Israel and raised outside of Toronto, where he was taught by his mother, Tessa, a high-level player from Russia. Auger-Aliassime, whose father is from Togo, grew up outside of Quebec City and trained in Montreal. Andreescu was born near Toronto, but took up the game at age 7, at a time when she was living with her parents in their native Romania. Raonic was born in Montenegro, is of Serbian descent, and came to Canada at age 3 with his parents Vasek Pospisil, a Wimbledon doubles champion and former Top 25 singles player, was born in British Columbia to parents who escaped their native Czechoslovakia during the Cold War.

“Their parents came to Canada for a better life, and they’ve been shaped by the world,” Downey says.

And that’s where the other side of the Canadian success story begins.

In an interview with Canadian tennis journalist Tom Tebbutt last fall, Borfiga explained his reasons for leaving Paris and starting over in Montreal.

“They were on the second floor of a garage with open doors, and it was windy as hell,” Downey says. “But Louis said, ‘Hey, that’s what the players need to learn to deal with.’”

The young Canadians have also benefited from the lineup of coaches that Borfiga has brought from France.

“I think competition was a big thing,” Raonic said this spring. “Me and Vasek being the same age, we always competed. And now we have Felix and Denis competing against each other.”

Happy tennising everybody: 10 moments to remember from Roland Garros

Mon, 10 Jun 2019 13:36:00 +0000

“Yeah, I got beaten pretty badly today by Ash Barty (well done, buddy), but here is why I love this sport—A THREAD.”

It’s not often that some of the best tennis commentary comes from a player who has just been eliminated from a tournament, but that’s what Andrea Petkovic gave us at Roland Garros, in a Twitter thread after her third-round defeat at the hands of Ashleigh Barty, the eventual champion.

“While waiting for my match,” the German tweeted, “I was fortunate enough to watch SO. MANY. THINGS happening around roughly the same time.”

Petkovic described a series of amazing athletic feats and emotionally wrenching scenes, all of which took place within a few minutes of each other.

“Jan-Lennard Struff serving and volleying ON CLAY saving break point after break point at 8-8 in the fifth set.”

“Madison Keys yelling COME ON at herself in a changeover over and over again after saving break points at 4-4 in the third in only the most Keysian way possible—HELLO FOREHAND DOWN THE LINE ON THE RUN FASTER THAN LIGHTNING.”

“A Polish teenager crying with joy as her opponent Monica Puig fell on her knees in desperation.”

“Two guys with one-handed backhands (you know who you are!) hit the ball so freaking hard that they had to stand back behind the baseline so far I couldn’t find them on the TV screen anymore.”

Petkovic was voicing what we many of us love most about Grand Slam tennis—the too-muchness of it all. These events are about more than just matches and scores and results; they’re about the sheer volume of emotion that’s packed into each day. Over the years, tennis players have loosened up and grown more willing to express that emotion—the tears of joy and defeat—a fact that has only made the sport more compelling. No matter the round, every match at a major feels like life and death these days.

Summing up her thread, Petkovic wrote, “What I wanna say is: this sport is crazy and I love it and I hate it. But most of all: It is ours, isn’t it! Happy tennising everybody!”

It is ours. Tennis is more than just a league, like the NBA or NFL or La Liga; to its fans, it’s a world. It’s a world that crosses borders and surfaces, and is more diverse and global than any other in sports. And if it isn’t the most popular sport, that only heightens its appeal, because it allows us to leave everything and everyone else behind for an hour or two each day. Tennis is a bubble, and we’re happy to live in it when we can.

Most of all, tennis is a world because—like the real world, and unlike the rest of the sports world—it includes men and women. The feats of athletic excellence and scenes of emotion: we get them from players of both genders and on both tours. Which is all the more reason to protest when, as happened at Roland Garros this year, the men play their semifinals in the biggest stadium, and the women play theirs in two smaller arenas.

Like many Grand Slams before it, this year’s Roland Garros consisted of administrative bungling redeemed by athletic mastery. With Petkovic’s example in mind, here’s a look back at 10 of those redemptive moments.

*****

Benoit Paire’s ecstasy and agony. Twice the 30-year-old Frenchman put us on his personal five-set roller-coaster—once in a win over Pierre-Hugues Herbert, the other in a loss to Kei Nishikori. Both times, Paire was a must-watch for his urbane outward style—as someone said, he looks like he should be playing in a cravat—and the harrowing inward battle he’s constantly engaging with his nerves.

Sofia Kenin’s swagger. This 20-year-old blur of blond from Florida inspired jeers from the audience, and “death stares,” as she called them, from her opponent, Serena Williams. But she kept swinging out, and by the end, the crowd understood what she had been trying to tell them all along: “Sofia Kenin is in the house.”

Stan Wawrinka and Stefanos Tsitsipas’ war of the white and the red. White was the color of the zinc oxide that Wawrinka had slathered all over his face on that boiling hot day; red was the color of the clay on Tsitsipas’ back from all the rolls and dives he took on Court Suzanne Lenglen. Over five hours, Tsitsipas won 195 points to Wawrinka’s 194; Stan hit 62 winners to Stef’s 61. Together, they may have given us the match of the year.

Amanda Anisimova’s scorching racquet. Kenin, Iga Swiatek, Marketa Vondrousova: This was a good fortnight for teen moxie. The youngest of the WTA’s youth brigade was Anisimova, a 17-year-old who idolizes Maria Sharapova, and seems to share her surprising love of clay, too. My favorite moment from her semifinal run came when she hit a backhand winner past defending champion Simona Halep on match point. Anisimova tossed her racquet away so quickly, it was as if she had just burned her hands on it. Maybe she had.

Jo Konta’s one-hitter. Make a run to the Rome final out of nowhere and we can call it random. Follow it up with a run to the French Open semis and we can call it brilliant. Konta chalked up her newfound love of clay to the freedom her coach had given her to play the way she wanted to play. Watching her mix service speeds, spins, and locations, and drop just one point on serve to Sloane Stephens in the second set of their quarterfinal, was like watching a baseball pitcher throw a no-hitter—or a one-hitter, anyway. It was a pleasure watching Jo think.

Marketa Vondrousova’s measurings. Many players have one gear; they hit hard, and if that doesn’t work, they hit harder. The Czech is just 19, but she has a naturally nuanced way around the court. She can slug one ground stroke with plenty of weight, and then come under the next with the most delicate finesse. Can a player win a major title by using the drop shot as her primary weapon? Vondrousova almost did it this week, and she may show us how very soon.

Rafa and Roger take on a tornado. After Nadal’s semifinal victory over Federer, the Spaniard was proud of the “high level” that the two legends had reached in the hurricane-like conditions that surrounded them in Chatrier. He was right—any other pair of players would have looked foolish staggering around in that wind, but Roger and Rafa made the ball dance and bend into the corners of the court. It was hardly the best of their 39 meetings, but it may have been the most resourceful.

Dominic Thiem’s heaven and hell. “I’ve come from heaven to hell,” Thiem said after losing the final on Sunday. Indeed, 24 hours earlier, he had reveled in the biggest win of his career, over Novak Djokovic; now he had lost the last two sets 6-1, 6-1 to Nadal. But whether the Austrian is winning or losing, what he exudes most is humility, normality, decency, fairness, an egoless striving. I’ll remember the joy on his face when, after choking his first two match points against Djokovic in the semis, he finally broke through with a forehand winner—the open court was waiting, and this time he didn’t miss it. But I’ll also remember the thumbs-up Thiem gave Nadal after a particularly stunning drop volley by the Spaniard. The compliment was deserved, but not everyone would have had the good manners, in the middle of a Grand Slam final, to give it out.

Ash Barty’s smooth operation. It starts with the service motion—an easy backward rocking that leads to a wicked snap of her right arm. As with everything else about Barty’s game, she does it just the way we’re taught to do it, and she makes it a look a whole lot easier than it is. There’s something soothing about watching Barty drive one backhand and slice the next, roll one forehand and flatten out the next, rally from the baseline on one point and deftly take over the net on the next. In American football, when a quarterback is called a “game manager,” it’s an insult. To call Barty a “court manager” is a compliment of the highest degree. By winning on clay, the 23-year-old has already shown she can manage her way around any type of court.

Rafael Nadal’s dirty dozen. Nadal’s 12th title at Roland Garros was as convincing as any other. He served as well as he ever had, and volleyed even better. But it’s his competitive instincts that still set him apart. Against Thiem, he had a sixth sense for what to do at any given moment. When Thiem pushed him around the baseline at the start, Nadal responded by coming forward. When Thiem won the second set, Nadal responded by raising his game, with a flurry of winners, to a place where Thiem couldn’t follow. And on Thiem’s final two break points early in the fourth set—essentially his last stand—Rafa saved them by serving wide on the first one, and then, just when Thiem was expecting him to do it again, switching it up and going down the T on the second one.

There are a lot of things we can learn from Rafa—how to enjoy the struggle, how to avoid beating yourself, how to use the bad times to inspire the good. But there are some things you can’t teach. How to win 12 titles at Roland Garros is one of them.

At 33, with 18 Slams, Rafael Nadal is a more complete player than ever

Sun, 09 Jun 2019 21:02:00 +0000

Rafael Nadal ended his 15th French Open in roughly the same position where he ended his first French Open, in 2005: lying flat on his back, just behind the baseline on the TV-camera side of Court Philippe Chatrier, with a smile of triumph and relief across his face.

Back in ’05, sporting a sleeveless green shirt and a lot of hair, the 19-year-old Nadal was celebrating his first Roland Garros title, which came with a four-set win over Mariano Puerta in the final. Two days earlier, Rafa had eliminated the top seed, Roger Federer, in four sets.

In 2019, sporting a yellow shirt with sleeves, and significantly less hair, the 33-year-old Nadal was celebrating his 12th Roland Garros title, which came with a four-set win over Dominic Thiem. Two days earlier, Rafa had eliminated Federer, this time in straight sets.

As they say, death, taxes, and Rafa at Roland Garros. He’s now 93-2 in Paris, and he has won more titles there than any other player, man or woman, has won at a single Grand Slam event.

Another Grand Slam champion, John McEnroe, has been there to interview Nadal after all 12 titles for NBC. This year, Johnny Mac began with the obvious question: “How?”

Nadal gave him the obvious answer: “I don’t know.”

McEnroe went on to ask if Rafa had any advice for the young athletes who were watching back in the States. This time he elicited a more useful response.

“Go every day with the goal to improve something,” Nadal said. “Enjoy the work of every day.”

Rafa’s answer explained a lot about his 15-year, Groundhog Day-like journey from 2005 to 2019 in Paris.

Thirty-three-year-old athletes are not supposed to be better—physically, mentally, or any other way—than they were at 19. Experience tells us that they lose a step in their legs, and they let doubts seep into their minds more easily. In the past, this has proven to be doubly true for tennis players; in a sport that rewards fast-twitch muscles and fearless attitudes, teenage champs have been more common than 33-year-old ones.

All of that has changed in the era of the Big 3, of course. When Federer, who won the 2017 Australian Open at age 36, was asked whether he thought he was better in his 30s than he had been in his 20s, he said, essentially: I hope so, because otherwise I don’t know what all the time on the practice court was for.

Yet few of us, I think, believe that athletes improve as they age. Recently, TENNIS.com ran a poll that asked readers who would win at Roland Garros, the young Rafa or the old Rafa. Young Rafa won in a landslide. You know what they say, “Father Time is undefeated.”

Father Time will defeat Nadal eventually, but he’s going to have to make a serious comeback to do it. In virtually every aspect of the sport, the Rafa of today is better than the Rafa of 2005. As he said, he has “gone every day with the goal to improve something,” and that mindset has paid off.

Start with his serve. Nadal has joked in the past that when he first joined the tour, he had the worst serve in the game. That’s an exaggeration, of course, but his serve now bares little resemblance to the one he spun into the middle of the box as a teenager. During this past off-season, Nadal developed a new motion, one which helped take him to the Australian Open final. It was just as helpful in Paris. Against Thiem, he made 73 percent of his first serves and won 73 percent of his first-serve points. When Thiem earned two break points early in the fourth set, Nadal saved the first with a slice serve wide, and the second with a flat serve down the T that surprised Thiem.

Next we go to Rafa’s volley, which was nearly as important as his serve. Again, this is not a shot Nadal was famous for in his youth, but his ability to end points with it was a big part of what separated him from Thiem. Rafa was 23 of 27 at net, compared to Thiem’s 12 of 15. Nadal charged forward at every opportunity, anticipated well up there, and came up with a couple of drop volleys that Thiem could only applaud. Thiem kept applauding in the interview room.

“If you ask all the men in professional tennis, I mean, almost everyone will tell you that he’s one of the best volleyers of our game,” Thiem said. “Most of the time he’s so successful because he prepares the point well, and then he has an easy volley. But still, he puts them away.”

“The last time he missed a volley was maybe seven years ago,” Thiem added with a smile.

“Was so important to not lose court [position] against him,” Nadal said. “Because if not from few meters back, so difficult because he’s very powerful with his forehand.”

Finally, we come to Nadal’s backhand. When he was younger, Nadal did little more than keep the rally going with that shot, and it could be vulnerable to a relentless attack. This year, first against Federer and then against Thiem, Nadal’s backhand was every bit as lethal and impenetrable as his forehand. In 2015 and 2016, when his forehand was misfiring, Nadal needed to shore up his backhand, and he did.

If Nadal isn’t as fast as he was in 2005, it doesn’t seem to make any difference; he tracked down virtually every Thiem drop shot on Sunday. If anything, he knows how to use his energy more efficiently now than he did at 19—he still fist-pumps, but he doesn’t throw in the scissor-kick leaps as often as he once did. And when doubts creep into his head, the way they did at the end of the second set, he’s quick to banish them by going back on the attack, the way he did in the third set. Yes, experience has taught Nadal that things can go wrong, but it has also taught him that the best way to make them go right again is to take matters into your own hands.

In practice, Nadal is known for bludgeoning every forehand that comes his way. But if you stick around long enough, you’ll also see him engage in animated discussions with his coaches about the smallest of technical details. Add that up over 15 years and, as Federer says, it would be a shock if it didn’t make him a better tennis player.

Of course, the wear and tear has taken its toll on Nadal. Today he talked about how down he was after hurting his knee in Indian Wells and playing so poorly in Monte Carlo. At the next event, in Barcelona, he said he had to decide between taking time off, or trying to “change the dynamic” and get a little bit better each day. Was there ever any doubt about which course he would choose?

“Thinking a lot, finally I think I was able to change and was able to fight back for every small improvement that I was able to make happen,” he said. “Since that first match against [Leonardo] Mayer in Barcelona, I think the things have been improving every single day.”

“Of course, have this [French Open] trophy with me means a lot. But personally, the personal satisfaction of change the dynamic is the thing that I am more satisfied.”

Whether it’s technical, physical, or mental, Nadal sees every problem as a solution waiting to happen. That’s how you end up better at 33 than you were at 19. That’s how you give Father Time a run for his money. That’s how win 12 titles at Roland Garros.

Final Preview: Dime a dozen for Nadal; Thiem seeks major breakthrough

Sat, 08 Jun 2019 19:11:00 +0000

For the last five years or so, Dominic Thiem has been widely touted as Rafael Nadal’s successor at Roland Garros. No one thinks he’s going to win the title 11 times or anything, but with his heavy topspin and his speedy way around the dirt, the Austrian seems like someone who will be ready to go all the way there whenever Rafa decides to hang up his King of Clay crown.

To his credit, Thiem has tried his best to live up that billing, and has made step by step progress toward that goal. He beat Nadal at a smaller clay event in Buenos Aires in 2016, and at bigger clay events in Rome and Madrid in 2018, and Barcelona in 2019. He also staged a five-set epic with the Spaniard at the US Open last year, before falling 7-6 in the fifth set at 2:00 A.M. The only place where Thiem hasn’t made a run at Rafa is Roland Garros itself. In 2017, he won seven games from Nadal in a semifinal defeat. In 2018, managed to eke out nine in a straight-set final-round defeat. At this rate, Thiem will dethrone Rafa in roughly 2040.

Does that mean we can expect Thiem to win 11 games in another one-sided loss on Sunday? He has a few things working for him. He’s coming off the biggest Grand Slam win of his career, over Novak Djokovic, in a match that stretched his nerves to the snapping point. He beat Nadal solidly, in two sets, in the Barcelona final earlier this spring. And he knows what it feels like to play a Roland Garros final.

But Thiem also has two big things working against him.

(1) He was forced to play nearly three sets of intense tennis against Djokovic on Saturday, while Nadal happily watched on TV during his day of rest.

(2) Now has to play Rafa.

Winner: Nadal

Thiem snuffs out Djokovic's miracle comeback in wind-tunnel semifinal

Sat, 08 Jun 2019 17:11:00 +0000

Has a marathon runner ever gone 26.2 miles, approached the finish line, and then just...stopped?

That’s what Dominic Thiem appeared to do while serving at 5-3, 40-15 in the fifth set—double match point—against Novak Djokovic on Saturday at Roland Garros. Thiem had survived two days and 24 hours of topsy-turvy tennis, hurricane-like winds, multiple rain delays and scheduling controversies, and a feverishly rejuvenated Djokovic at the start of the fifth set.

Yet after making his way through all of that, when he reached the precipice of the biggest win of his career, Thiem could barely swing his racquet. Given a chance to rip his favorite shot, a topspin backhand, on each of his first two match points, he sliced the ball meekly instead, once into the net and once wide. Two more wild errors later, he was broken. A few minutes after that, the score was 5-5, and the world No. 1 looked as if he was about to do what world No. 1s do: Snatch a victory from the deep inside the jaws of defeat.

“Two match points where I was too passive,” Thiem admitted. “Didn’t hit the ball because the wind was pretty strong in this game.”

“Somehow I had the feeling that I had the lead in the whole match, and then at the end it got so tough.”

At 5-5, with Thiem serving into the wind, everything looked set up for another Djokovic back-from-match-point miracle—like the ones he had pulled off against Roger Federer at the US Open in 2010 and 2011, and against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga at Roland Garros in 2012. The 25-year-old Thiem had come a long way over the last two seasons, but as he said before this match, he was going up against three of the best players in tennis history—Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer—in these semifinals.

This time history took a different turn. Rather than ruthlessly seizing his opportunity, Djokovic also faltered at the finish line; rather than folding in the face of a 15-time Slam champion, Thiem gathered himself.

“Then the big, key point was this service game at 5-all, when I had the wind against me, and I played a really good game, and then my mind was up again,” Thiem said.

When the two players switched sides at 6-5, Thiem had the lead and the wind at his back. Djokovic continued to miss, and Thiem was presented with a third match point. When the ball came to his backhand, he went with the slice again, but this time it worked. His shot floated crosscourt, pulled Djokovic into the alley, and left the rest of the court open for his forehand. He didn’t miss.

“It was my first five-setter in Roland Garros,” said Thiem, who hit 52 winners and was 18 of 20 at the net over the course of four hours and 13 minutes. “It was an epic match. I mean so many ups and downs and rain, going back to the locker [room], on court again...At the end, both of us could win, and I luckily got the better in the end.”

For Djokovic, the loss snapped his 26-match Grand Slam win streak, and left him two wins short of a second Djoker Slam. Afterward, he echoed Thiem’s thoughts, but from the other side of the (narrow) winner-loser divide.

“This match was always going to be tough, because Dominic is a fantastic player on clay—in general, but especially on clay,” Djokovic said.

“Yeah, it’s unfortunate, you know, these kind of matches, one or two points decide a winner.”

When Djokovic played Thiem in Madrid last month, he approached the match with a determination to stay calm and not beat himself, and he edged Thiem in two tiebreakers. At the time, I thought Djokovic was getting himself into the mindset that he would need to win his second French Open. In Paris, he maintained that mindset through his first five matches, all of which he won in straight sets. In the quarterfinals, as soon as Alexander Zverev broke him in the first set, Djokovic locked in and cruised the rest of the way—he grew calmer under duress.

But that’s not how it went for him in the semifinals. Whether it was the conditions, or the opponent, or the pressure of the approaching title match, Djokovic didn’t stay calm. On Friday, he asked the referee to stop play because of the wind. On Saturday, he complained to the chair umpire about starting the shot clock too quickly. He rushed the net with uncharacteristic abandon. He slammed a ball against a wall, and another into the court. He kicked the clay and screamed at himself. And just when he seemed ready to roar past Thiem in the fifth set, he didn’t.

“Obviously, when you’re playing in hurricane conditions, it’s hard to perform your best,” said Djokovic, who committed 53 unforced errors against 39 winners, and was just 35 of 71 at net. “It’s really just kind of surviving in these kind of conditions and trying to hold your serve and play one ball more than your opponent in the court.

“It is what it is. I played great tennis, I think, throughout most of the clay-court season. And here I didn’t drop a set until semis.”

Still, Djokovic credited Thiem—“he took it, he won it, and well done to him.” And if it had been a lesser opponent on the other side of the net, Djokovic might not have been so edgy.

Thiem can celebrate a signature victory, and another step forward. But since this is still the era of the Big 3, he won’t have long to bask in the glow. In less than 24 hours, he’ll be back on court, trying for an even bigger win, against a well-rested 11-time champ, Nadal. For now, Thiem should be happy that he finished one marathon. He can try to cross the next finish line when he gets to it.

Final Preview: Barty, Vondrousova vie for maiden Grand Slam trophy

Fri, 07 Jun 2019 17:14:00 +0000

We’ve seen surprising French Open finals in the past—Francesca Schiavone vs. Sam Stosur from 2011 comes to mind. But Barty vs. Vondrousova may take the cake. In the 23-year-old Australian, we have a player whose all-court style has always seemed better suited to grass courts, hard courts, indoor courts—any type of court other than clay. In the 19-year-old Czech, we have a player who hasn’t been on the radar long enough for anyone to know what her best surface is.

While few of us expected this match to happen this year, in this tournament, it’s not as if Barty and Vondrousova’s talent has never been recognized; they’ve both been touted as potential future Grand Slam champions.

Barty has one of the game’s smoothest service motions, and she makes every other shot—from touch volleys to power forehands—look almost as easy. Best of all may be her backhand; few players transition between the two-handed drive and the one-handed slice as effortlessly as she does.

One of those who does is Vondrousova. The teenager has the useful ability to hit heavy ground strokes, and then turn around and throw in the lightest, most diabolically accurate of drop shots. We knew that before this tournament began; what we found out in her win over Jo Konta in the semifinals, in which she mounted comebacks in both sets, is how steely Vondrousova can be on the big stage. She hasn’t dropped a set the entire tournament.

While they’re both young, Barty and Vondrousova have played twice, and Barty has won both times, in close straight-setters, on grass and hard courts. Clay could help Vondrousova change that outcome, or at least turn this into a very entertaining match. As surprised as Barty may be to have made it this far, though, she’s probably a little more ready go one step farther. Winner: Barty

A sturdy and stoic Rafael Nadal survived the wind and Roger Federer

Fri, 07 Jun 2019 15:59:00 +0000

To borrow a phrase written about another historical event that took place in Paris, Friday’s match between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer at Roland Garros was a trip back to the best of times for one player, and the worst of times for the other.

The Spaniard and the Swiss hadn’t met in Court Philippe Chatrier since 2011, but Nadal’s 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 win over Federer had all of the hallmarks of their five previous matches in that arena.

Nadal, as he always has, bent his serve wide, kicked his forehand high and kept his error count low. The longer the rally went on, the more likely Rafa was to win it.

Federer, as he always has, made valiant but inconsistent attempts to change the dynamic and cut the points short, either by bringing Nadal forward or charging the net himself. He forced the issue and grabbed the upper hand in rallies, only to see Nadal do what he has traditionally done against him here: come up a piece of counter-punching brilliance to steal the point away.

Tactically, Nadal was the more certain of the two. Whether it was with his serve or his passing shots, he seemed to be one thought and shot ahead of his opponent. Determined not to give Federer openings to attack, Rafa made 81 percent of his first serves; while the vast majority of them went to Federer’s backhand side, he also caught the Swiss leaning the wrong way in the deuce court numerous times.

As for Federer, he tried to serve and volley, he tried to drop shot, he tried to go hard into Nadal’s forehand and move forward, but too often he ended up where he didn’t want to be, at the baseline, hitting backhands from shoulder height. Federer won just 48 percent of his net points, and 39 percent of his second-serve points. As good as Federer’s forehand approaches were—many of them would have won him the point against anyone else—Nadal’s hooking passing shots were still better.

What was different about the 39th meeting between these two were the conditions. The wind swirled through the stadium, blew the clay across the court and into the players’ eyes, and made the balls dive and curve uncontrollably. Normally, that leads to an unsightly match, but for two sets at least, Nadal and Federer made tornado tennis fun as they hacked and chopped and lunged at the ball, and ran each other into the corners. If the wind affected one player more than the other, it was probably Federer, who struggled with his serve and his volleys; he said he was happy just to avoid looking “ridiculous” out there. if anyone’s game is sturdy enough for a hurricane, it’s Rafa’s.

“When he’s in the rally, he plays with great spin on the forehand, great control on the backhand side,” Federer said. “So it’s really hard to find holes, especially in the wind, if you’re trying to hit through the ball, which is really difficult.”

Yet it isn’t just Nadal’s game that’s built for bad weather; his stoical mentality helps, too.

“The conditions out there today have been so hard, so difficult to manage,” Nadal said. “Was the day to be just focus, accept all the adversities, and just be focused on positive all the time. That’s what I tried to do.”

“Being honest, with that conditions out there, played the way we played have been a great level of tennis because the conditions have been so tough.”

For many fans, this result will seem academic, a foregone conclusion; we already knew Rafa was the King of Clay. What I had forgotten, though, from their earlier meetings in Paris was how hard Federer pushes Nadal on dirt, and how many dazzling, even desperate shots Rafa has to hit to beat him.

On Friday, Nadal won important points with blazing, full-blooded crosscourt backhand winners; with a passing shot off a Federer overhead that nestled into the corner; with a short-hop pass that landed on the sideline; with a perfect re-drop and volley winner to go up 5-4 in the second set; and with a surprising ace down the T at a key moment. While Federer’s improved one-handed backhand has been celebrated in recent years, Nadal showed today how far he’s come with his two-hander. As Federer said, there aren’t any holes left in Rafa’s game.

There was one other element to this match that felt like déjà vu: The crowd. As they always have when these two play, the French fans roared hopefully after every winning Federer point, and offered tepid applause for Nadal. When the match was over, they stood and cheered as Federer walked off and waved good-bye, perhaps for the last time; if this was the 37-year-old’s last run at Roland Garros, he made it a worthy and memorable one.

When Nadal reached match point, the fans’ collective voice swelled as they chanted “Ro-ger! Ro-ger! Ro-ger!” one more time. Then Nadal swung a slice serve into Federer’s backhand, and Federer hit the return long. Some things never change.

Preview: Can Djokovic tame Thiem's power like he did in Madrid?

Thu, 06 Jun 2019 17:45:00 +0000

Djokovic and Thiem have a history at Roland Garros, though it’s hard to know what, if anything, we can learn from it. In 2016, the Serb cleaned the Austrian’s clock with the loss of just seven games; in 2017, everything went the opposite way, as Thiem straight-setted a lackluster Djokovic, bageling him in the third set. More recently, and more relevantly, these two met in the Madrid semifinals last month, and a very calm and controlled Djokovic did exactly what he needed to do to tame Thiem’s power and edge him in two tiebreakers.

I could see something similar happening on Friday. Thiem is ready to win the French Open, and if he was in any other quartet of semifinalists, he might. But Djokovic has played this tournament with the clear-eyed, cold-blooded determination of someone who knows this is his chance to make history. When Alexander Zverev broke Djokovic in the first set of their quarterfinal, it didn’t spell doom for Djokovic, it spelled doom for Zverev instead. Put on alert, Djokovic hardly put another foot wrong all day. Thiem will bring a lot of firepower to this one, but I think Djokovic will do whatever it takes to find the answers to counter it. Winner: Djokovic

Preview: Barty vs. Anisimova a battle between velocity and variation

Thu, 06 Jun 2019 17:44:00 +0000

Barty and Anisimova are hardly classical clay-courters; one likes to rush the net, the other to pummel ground strokes and end points quickly. But they’ve been playing like dyed-in-the-wool dirt-ballers over the last two weeks in Paris. Barty has dropped one set, and Anisimova none—not even to defending champion Simona Halep in the quarterfinals.

The Aussie and the American have never played, but it’s safe to say their match will be a battle between velocity and variation. Anisimova will bring the velocity on her forehand and backhand, and Barty will do what she can to make slugging winners as complicated as possible for her opponent. The result may lie on Anisimova’s racquet; will she be on, or will she be off? And if she’s on, will Barty be able to turn her off before two sets are up? Winner: Barty

How Amanda Anisimova coolly blasted past Halep and into the semifinals

Thu, 06 Jun 2019 16:39:00 +0000

Amanda Anisimova had reached that moment, the one that she and everyone else in Court Philippe Chatrier knew would come. For the last hour, the 17-year-old American had run the defending French Open champion, Simona Halep, side to side and up and back. She had pelted forehands and backhands past her with consummate ease. She had seemed to know exactly where the Romanian would run next, and had hit the ball to the only spot on the court where she couldn’t reach it. One of her clean, wrong-footing winners had inspired the Roland Garros TV commentator, Richard Evans, who has covered this tournament since the 1950s, to exclaim, “Now that’s how you play tennis!” After 11 games, Anisimova led 6-2, 3-0.

But there was no way that Halep, who had reached the last two French Open finals, was going to let the kid off that easily. There was no way she wouldn’t mount a comeback, no way Anisimova, a rookie making her Chatrier debut, wouldn’t have to come face to face with her nerves, and find a way to play through them. It’s a rite of tennis passage.

The moment came at 4-4 in the second set. Over the previous 15 minutes, Halep had worked her way into the match, and Anisimova’s shots had begun to miss their targets. Anisimova stared toward her coach; her eyes widened with anxiety; her normally cool surface demeanor was roiled by emotions for the first time. She let a 40-15 lead slip to deuce, and then break point for Halep.

On the next point, Anisimova tossed the ball and caught it, tossed it and caught it again; she had lost control of her arm, and seemed about to lose control of the match. Rather than rip a ground stroke, as she had on virtually every point, Anisimova played it safe and looped a rally ball deep. She put it in the right spot, apparently, because Halep, weirdly and uncharacteristically, pulled up on her next forehand and fluttered it weakly into the net. The Romanian stared at the clay in front of her and raged at what she believed was a bad bounce.

Had the tennis gods intervened on Anisimova’s behalf? Had she saved that break point with luck or skill? The often-unstated truth is that sometimes we need to see an opponent make a mistake, to see that she is also nervous, before we can relax ourselves.

Whatever happened on Halep’s miss, the moment of panic for Anisimova had passed. She held serve and broke with yet another laser-like backhand winner that Halep couldn’t reach. With her 6-2, 6-4 win secure, Anisimova’s racquet flew out of her hands as she flashed a look of pure disbelief at her player box.

“I don’t think it will sink in, at least not for today,” said Anisimova, who at the start of the tournament felt honored just to be able to practice in the big stadium.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s crazy. I really can’t believe the result today. And getting the opportunity to play against Simona, that’s amazing, but how it ended is even crazier to me.”

Her temporary shock aside, Anisimova had prepared for this. She had prepared by practicing her forehand and backhand, of course, but she also knew they wouldn’t be enough if she found herself on Chatrier, against the defending champion. She knew she would need to do more than just swing away and rip ground strokes; she would also need to hit them when she was so tight she could barely move her shoulder, or toss the ball to serve.

“Definitely that’s something I work on, just being composed, because that’s when I play my best tennis, when I’m not really nervous,” Anisimova said. “I think I have done a better job. Like, I’ve practiced it. I tried to put myself in difficult situations and try to face challenges and try to calm down when that happens. It’s definitely a big thing in tennis. It’s definitely what I’ve been working on.”

Listening to her off court, you might think that staying composed wouldn’t be a problem for Anisimova, who says her friends tease her for having a “monotone voice.” Where her fellow Russian-turned-Floridian Sofia Kenin is feisty and demonstrative, Anisimova is laid back. Born in New Jersey to parents from Moscow, she moved with them to Florida at 3, so her older sister, Maria, also a tennis player, would have more opportunities to train.

If the unassuming Amanda was just along for the ride at first, she has quickly switched to the tennis fast track. While her parents, Konstantin and Olga, try to limit her play and keep her from burning out, Anisimova’s powerful 5'11" frame and precise timing have made it impossible to hold her back—in her easygoing way, she’s broken through all the restraints. At a time when teen tennis champions seemed to be a thing of the past, she is one. It’s not surprising that the last player to win a Grand Slam at 17, Maria Sharapova, is Anisimova’s idol.

Like Sharapova, Anisimova is working to improve her movement. Her long legs don’t make her a natural speedster or defender; she’ll likely always win on the strength of her shot-making. But like Sharapova, Anisimova has also shown a sudden and surprising comfort on clay this year. Before playing the Bogota event in April, she hadn’t won a WTA match on dirt; by the end of the week, she had her first and so far only tour title, and now she’s in the semifinals of the French Open.

That’s rare air for someone her age, and Anisimova admitted today that when she saw some of her old friends in the junior tournament at Roland Garros, she suffered a pang of nostalgia.

“It was just, like, a fun environment and everyone was just hanging out,” she said of her carefree junior days. “It’s kind of different in the WTA. I don’t have that many friends, I’d say.”

Not that she would trade those days for her life now. When Anisimova watched her last backhand skid past Halep on Thursday, all notions of nostalgia had vanished. Her moment had come, and, in her own cool way, she had blasted right through it.

Preview: Konta vs. Vondrousova a surprising but not shocking semifinal

Wed, 05 Jun 2019 17:33:00 +0000

On the surface, this looks like a shocker of a semifinal. Before this spring, Konta was never known as a clay-court threat, and the 19-year-old Vondrousova was basically never known. But if you’ve been paying attention this spring, you’re probably not all that shocked to see these two women playing for a spot in the French Open final.

Vondrousova reached the final at the clay-court event in Istanbul, while Konta did the same in Rome—along the way at the Foro Italico, the Brit also beat the Czech in three sets. Their rematch should be intriguing. Konta has been playing with clarity and confidence, and using her serve with brilliant variety; she lost one point on it in the second set of her quarterfinal against Sloane Stephens. The question will be whether Vondrousova can complicate matters for Konta. With her mix of heavy ground strokes and feathery touch, she could be just the woman to do it. Winner: Konta

Rafa vs. Roger XXXIX: Can Federer score first win over Nadal in Paris?

Wed, 05 Jun 2019 17:25:00 +0000

On Friday, live on Tennis Channel, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal will renew their rivalry in the French Open semifinals. Here's everything you need to know to get ready for this throwback throwdown:

What's On The Line: 10 things at stake for Roger and Rafa
Federer fans: He's 5-0 in their last six matches
Nadal fans: He's 5-0 in their five meetings at Roland Garros
Preview: Steve Tignor breaks down the 39th career meeting
Podcast: Debating Federer's chances against Nadal in Paris

This will be the 39th meeting between Nadal and Federer, but the more important number to consider is five. In a sense, it will be a battle of the fives, and who you believe will be the winner will depend on which five you think is more important.

Nadal is 5-0 versus Federer at Roland Garros. They met in the final in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2011, and in the semifinals in 2005. Four of those matches were competitive, and went four sets; one, the 2008 final, was blowout city. In general, Federer has pushed Nadal on this court, but hasn’t seriously threatened him.

Still, the most recent of those matches came in 2011. The rivalry has evolved since then, and that’s where the second five comes in.

Federer is 5-0 in his last five meetings with Nadal. The first of those wins came in 2015, but the turnaround really began in the 2017 Australian Open final, when Federer finally changed the dynamic and grabbed the upper hand in their rallies. Rather than allowing himself to be pushed around on his backhand side by Rafa’s topspin forehand, Federer moved forward and slapped that shot for winners. He kept doing it through their next three meetings, all of which came in 2017, and all of which Federer won in straight sets.

But there was something else those matches had in common: they were all played on hard courts. This is the first time that Federer will bring his upgraded backhand to a match with Rafa on clay. Will it work as well? It might. At the start of 2017, few people would have predicted that Federer would go on a long win streak, on any surface, against Nadal, who led their head to head 23-11 at the time. So it’s plausible that Federer can do it on clay as well. He has beaten Nadal twice on dirt in the past (against 13 losses).

Aside from his improved backhand, Federer may also bring a new tactic to this oldest of ATP rivalries: serve and volley. He has used it sparingly, perhaps too sparingly, against Rafa over the years, but it helped him get over the hump against Stan Wawrinka in the quarterfinals on Tuesday. Federer, seeing Wawrinka standing well back in the court, had success sending slow kick serves out to his backhand side, which gave him time to drape himself over the net. Will that work on Friday? Nadal also stands well back in the court, but those same serves would end up going to his forehand—probably not a recipe for sustained success. If he’s planning to come in, Federer may have to switch it up and try to swing his serves out to Rafa’s backhand on the deuce side. But just as Federer has shored up his one-hander in recent years, Nadal has done the same with his two-hander.

There are reasons to like Federer’s chances. The question in the end may be how fully he believes in them against Nadal here. Getting off to a good start is important for every player in every match, but it would seem to be especially crucial for Federer’s confidence in this one. And when I say a good start, I mean winning the first two sets, not just the opening one. Once Nadal begins to grind him down, and takes a lead, Federer could start reliving the memories—and nightmares—of those five French Opens past. Winner: Nadal

Notre Dame will always be intimately connected with Roland Garros

Wed, 05 Jun 2019 13:02:00 +0000

Notre Dame, we hardly need to be reminded, is a special place for the French. The cathedral has stood at the center of Paris, and of what would become the nation of France, for more than 800 years. The literal center—all distances in the country are measured from “Our Lady.” And while its square stone towers rise just 225 feet, they feel as if they’re looming on the horizon, or in your imagination, wherever you happen to be.

Yet, as we saw from the global reaction to the fire that engulfed the church in April, it isn’t just the French who can claim Notre Dame. It has long been the focal point of virtually every American’s first—and probably second, third and fourth—experience of Paris. The church grounds, and the neighborhood surrounding them, which includes The Louvre and the Seine, could be renamed the city’s American Quarter. As much English is spoken as French, and the couple at the next café table are more likely to be from Texas than they are from anywhere in France.

In other words, Notre Dame is a tourist magnet. But it’s a tourist magnet for a reason. To an American’s eyes, or at least to this American’s eyes, the sight of a man-made structure from the 12th century, standing much as it did then, is equally awe-inspiring and mysterious. The cathedral’s stones are time made tangible, and history made a little less fathomable.

Who today can understand the motivations and beliefs of the medieval men who spent more than a century constructing this monumental tribute to the Virgin Mary? They remain beyond the grasp of my not-Catholic, not-God-fearing, 21st-century mind. What I can understand is the strength of the cathedral’s stone towers; there’s a solemn authenticity to them that goes beyond taste or ideology or politics or religion, and that no American building has the gravitas to match. It’s also hard to match the sound of the famous bells in those towers. On Sunday mornings, they supply a stately, rolling rhythm to Paris, one that blends with the Seine as it flows in and out of the islands at the city’s center.

I’ve covered the French Open off and on for the last 15 years and have never tired of circumnavigating those islands, and hearing those bells, and having Notre Dame in my peripheral vision. Maybe that’s because, as journalists, we have so little time to spend as tourists; I typically go once before the tournament starts, so I know I’m in Paris again, and then once at the end, so I remember that I was there. With the singles finals scheduled for 3:00 P.M. on Saturday and Sunday, there’s an opportunity, finally, to steer clear of Roland Garros and its press room for a few hours.

By then, though, it’s difficult to get the events of the last two weeks—the matches, the upsets, the hisses and boos from the bleachers—out of your mind. The French Open is the tensest of all tennis tournaments. There’s something about the colosseum-like atmosphere of Court Philippe Chatrier, the intensity of the fans’ reactions, and the gladiatorial nature of the matches, that elevates the drama and makes the stakes feel suffocatingly high. After spending two weeks in that hothouse climate, it can be difficult to let it go, even as you take a stroll through a museum.

I can remember walking in the vicinity of Notre Dame in 2004 and pondering the fate of Guillermo Coria, who would try to win his first major title later that afternoon against his countryman Gaston Gaudio—the bells, it seems, really were tolling for El Mago that day. Strolling the same streets over the years, I thought about Li Na as she tried to become the first Grand Slam champion from Asia in 2011; Serena Williams as she attempted to complete her great clay comeback campaign of 2013; and Simona Halep as she tried to put the previous year’s heartbreaking defeat behind her in 2018.

The tension was inescapable, at least in my mind, whenever a final between Rafael Nadal and either Roger Federer or Novak Djokovic loomed later in the afternoon. Would it rain, would the sun come out, would the match have to be postponed? If I could feel the pressure of the moment, what was going through the players’ minds? For me, in those meditative weekend-morning moments, the cathedral of Notre Dame seemed to be intimately connected to that cathedral of tennis across town, Roland Garros. Sports was a religion I could understand.

The other Grand Slam events are played in beautiful cities, but none has a beacon at its center like Notre Dame. I’ve never been drawn back on a final Saturday or Sunday to Federation Square in Melbourne, or Trafalgar Square in London, or—god forbid—Times Square in New York. At the end of my next French Open trip, when Rafa or Serena or maybe Dominic Thiem are getting ready to enter that clay colosseum on the edge of town, I look forward to returning to the city’s heart, to hear Notre Dame’s bells toll again, and to see that its towers are still standing.

In crucial moment, Federer had one more tool in his kit than Wawrinka

Tue, 04 Jun 2019 18:53:00 +0000

The pre-match numbers didn’t look good for Stan Wawrinka in his quarterfinal against Roger Federer on Tuesday.

22-3: That was Federer’s record against him.

6-0: That was Federer’s record in their last six matches.

5 hours, 9 minutes: That’s how long Wawrinka had played in his fourth-round win over Stefanos Tsitsipas two days earlier. It was only slightly less than the amount of time Federer had spent on court during the entire tournament.

But over the course of their three hour, 35 minute quarterfinal on Court Suzanne Lenglen on Tuesday, only a few points would spell the difference between the two countrymen. Federer’s 7-6 (4), 4-6, 7-6 (5) 6-4 win demonstrated how little can separate a 20-Slam winner from a three-Slam winner—but it also demonstrated how crucial that little bit of difference is. In the match’s most decisive moment, Federer could do something that Wawrinka couldn’t.

The moment came with Federer serving at 5-5 in the third set. The match hung in the balance throughout this long game. Each man had won a set, and the third had been a fierce tug of war; both knew what it meant. Wawrinka squandered a 4-2 lead, and Federer squandered two set points at 5-4. Now it was Wawrinka’s turn to knock on the door with two break points of his own.

On the first, Wawrinka pushed Federer back with a series of big ground strokes. Federer defended his forehand corner well, but instead of closing the net, Wawrinka retreated and ceded the court position he had just gained. Federer happily took it. He charged forward and finished the point with a forehand drop winner. In that rally, the momentum surged in Wawrinka’s direction, and then back in Federer’s, which is where it would stay.

Wawrinka could match Federer’s serve—Stan saved 16 of 18 break points, many of them with unreturnable bombs, and hit eight aces to Federer’s five. Wawrinka could match Federer’s forehand; Stan finished with 54 winners to Federer’s 53. But he couldn’t match his variety of weapons. In the stat of the day, Federer won 41 points at net to just nine for Wawrinka. Federer had success bringing Wawrinka forward and passing him. And he had even more success following his high-bouncing kick to net—often on second serves—and catching Wawrinka too far behind the baseline and out of position. Wawrinka couldn’t counter those tactics with any similar surprises of his own.

That’s what made the difference today, what has made the difference in many of their matches over the years, and what separates Federer from just about everyone else. That’s why he’s 23-3 against a three-time Slam champ, and 7-0 in their last seven meetings. And that’s why, at 37, he’s back in the semifinals at the French Open, with a chance to win his 21st major title.

Quarterfinal Previews: Djokovic-Zverev, Halep-Anisimova, Keys-Barty

Tue, 04 Jun 2019 18:18:00 +0000

Before each day's play at the 2019 French Open, we'll preview must-see matches.

Madison Keys vs. Ash Barty

Is it possible to win the “wrong” Slam? Keys and Barty are doing their best to find out. Both women have been touted as future major champions, but neither has been touted as a future French Open champ specifically. The American has the power, obviously, but she seemed too erratic for clay; the Aussie has the all-court versatility, obviously, but all-court versatility is rarely rewarded with a title in Paris. But here they are, having both made quiet and mostly efficient runs to the quarterfinals.

Keys and Barty have split their two previous matches. Keys has the more relevant victory, location wise: She beat Barty in straight sets at the 2017 French Open. But Barty has the more relevant victory, time-wise: She beat Keys in straight sets in Fed Cup earlier this year. When she’s on, it's tough for anyone to stop Keys, but she has thrown in some late-Slam clunkers against quality opponents in recent years, including one to Sloane Stephens in the semis here last year. Barty is a quality player, and she seems to be getting better every week. Winner: Barty

Simona Halep vs. Amanda Anisimova

There are numerous reasons to be intrigued by this match. First, Halep has never faced Anisimova; will she send the 17-year-old back to tennis school the way she did 18-year-old Iga Swiatek on Monday? Second, this match should give us more information about where Anisimova is in her evolution, and how good she could be. In a similar situation against Petra Kvitova at the Australian Open this year, the young American could barely put a ball in the court. What did Anisimova learn from that experience? She’ll need to have learned a lot to beat Halep at Roland Garros. Winner: Halep

Dominic Thiem vs. Karen Khachanov

Get ready for the slugfest of the day, and maybe the tournament. The Austrian and the Russian never met a ball they didn’t relish the chance to bludgeon. Thiem has been building to this tournament from the moment he lost in the final to Rafael Nadal last year, and his straight-set win over Gael Monfils on Monday would lead you to believe he’s peaking at the right time. Khachanov, by contrast, has flat-lined for most of this season; after a promising 2018, he came to Paris with a bafflingly bad 10-12 record, and he nearly lost to Gregoire Barrere in the second round. But Khachanov lived to fight another day, and he found all of his old game at once in beating Juan Martin del Potro in the fourth round. Khachanov and Thiem have met once, in Bercy last year, and Khachanov won. But that was on hard courts, and Thiem should still have the edge on clay. Winner: Thiem

Novak Djokovic vs. Alexander Zverev

Zverev is the exceedingly rare player who has a .500 record against Djokovic. They’ve split their four meetings; Zverev won their only match on clay, in the Rome final two years ago, and he won their most recent encounter, in the London final last November. So there are reasons to think the German has a chance against the top seed. But neither of Zverev’s wins came at a major; more specifically, neither came at a major where Djokovic is trying to become the first man in the Open era to win four of them in a row for a second time. Winner: Djokovic

Catch up on Week 1 at Roland Garros on the TENNIS.com Podcast:

The French Open's Sweet 16: What have we learned; what can we expect?

Mon, 03 Jun 2019 20:14:00 +0000

Depending on who you are, or where you’re from, we’ve either reached the “business end” of the 2019 French Open, or the “pointy end.” Both terms make sense: Now is when the players make the big bucks; and it’s also when the draws begin to narrow to their, well, pointy ends.

In short, the quarterfinals have arrived; in the U.S., we might call the surviving eight men and women the Sweet 16. Over the tournament’s first 10 days, the men’s and women’s events have been diametrically opposed, and almost perfectly complimentary. The WTA side has been about upstarts and surprises, fresh faces and youthful swagger. The ATP side, meanwhile, has been about old warhorses moving methodically toward a grand second-week demolition derby.

What stood out in the early going, and what can we expect to see now on? Here are four thoughts as we push the reset button in Paris.

*****

Novak: Resurrected Again, and Under the Radar

For the second time in the space of a year, Novak Djokovic appears to have resurrected himself and his game in a matter of weeks. Last year at Wimbledon, he shrugged off two seasons of injury, introspection and poor form, and won the tournament. This year in Madrid and Rome, and now in Paris, he shook off three months of early exits and sub-par play. While he hasn’t faced any top-level opposition at Roland Garros, Djokovic also hasn’t wasted any time dispatching everyone who has been in his path. The Serb has history to make: A second Djoker Slam, and a 16th major title are there for the taking; if doubt does creep into his head, those achievements might be motivation enough for him to banish it. So far, Djokovic has been so good that he’s hardly been noticed. That will change when he faces Alexander Zverev on Wednesday, but I don’t expect the result to be any different.

Teens Dreaming Big

Tennis’ eternal question can be asked one more time: Is it better to have upsets, and the temporary thrill that comes with them? Or is it better for things to go routinely and even dully in the early rounds, so that your star players are still alive later? The advantage of any dual-gender event is that you can have both, and that has been the case this year at Roland Garros. While the 30-something legends on the men’s side have encountered little resistance in their march forward, the women’s draw was upended by a group of fearless teens.

Amanda Anisimova, a 17-year-old from New Jersey, has smoothly and coolly reached her first Grand Slam quarterfinal without dropping a set. Sofia Kenin, a 20-year-old Floridian, played with defiant moxie to knock off Serena Williams. Iga Swiatek of Poland turned 18 during the tournament and showed off a killer forehand and a leaping backhand, before crashing back to earth on Monday against Simona Halep. And 19-year-old Marketa Vondrousova has had hands of gold as she has finessed her way to the quarterfinals. It’s good to have familiar faces, but it’s also good to have new blood. If we stop thinking about the tours as separate entities, and just think about tennis as a single dual-gender sport, we can have both.

If You Can’t Beat ’Em, Join ’Em

At this point, that would seem to be the attitude that the ATP’s younger generation should take. Thus far, the best of them—Zverev, Stefano Tsitsipas, and Dominic Thiem—haven’t been able to overthrow the ATP’s established stars. But they have joined them in the tour’s ruling class. On Monday, Thiem sent one 30-something, Gael Monfils, packing; Zverev did the same to another, Fabio Fognini; and so did a third Next Genner, Karen Khachanov, who out-bludgeoned Juan Martin del Potro in four sets. Last November, when the hard-hitting, 23-year-old Russian beat Djokovic for the Bercy title, he seemed destined to begin challenging for major titles, or at least more Masters titles. That’s not how it went over the first five months of 2019. Coming to Paris, Khachanov was still ranked No. 11, but he was also saddled with a 10-12 record and eight first-round losses on the year. Now he’s back where he belongs: In the quarterfinals of a major, trading bloodthirsty ground strokes with Thiem on Wednesday. That’s about as much as a young ATP player can hope for these days.

Winning Where They Shouldn’t

While seeds have been falling in the women’s draw, No. 8 Ash Barty and No. 14 Madison Keys are still standing—maybe a little taller than they were at the start of the tournament. The Aussie and the American have been touted as potential major-title winners, and for good reason. No one hits as hard as Keys, and few players can match Barty for athletic versatility. It’s just that neither of those two attributes have traditionally been associated with French Open champions. Many of us have imagined Keys and Barty going deep, or lifting trophies, at the other three Slams, but not so much in Paris. Of course, power players can win at Roland Garros; just ask Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova and Jelena Ostapenko. And all-courters can do it, too; just ask Federer. For either Keys and Barty, the road will end next round, when they face each other in the quarterfinals. But don’t be surprised if the winner goes on to bigger things. By now, on the women’s side, there’s no such thing as a surprise in Paris.

Previews: Federer vs. Wawrinka leads French Open quarterfinal slate

Mon, 03 Jun 2019 17:39:00 +0000

Before each day's play at the 2019 French Open, we'll preview three must-see matches.

Sloane Stephens vs. Jo Konta

Anyone who makes the quarterfinals of a major is, by definition, playing well, but that goes double for Stephens and Konta right now. In the last round, Stephens bamboozled 2016 Roland Garros champ Garbiñe Muguruza, while Konta blitzed past Donna Vekic the same she has blitzed past her 9 of her last 10 opponents. The Brit might be on the most surprising run of good form of 2019. Never known as a clay-courter—she hadn’t won a match at the French Open before last week—Konta reached the Rome final and has now made herself a front-runner in Paris. She’s playing with total clarity at the moment. Can Stephens, a finalist here last year and a more natural dirt-baller, make Konta’s life complicated again? Konta beat her in three sets in Rome, but Stephens has always been a step-up player at the Slams. Winner: Stephens

Roger Federer vs. Stan Wawrinka

Federer is 22-3 against Wawrinka. He has won their last six meetings, all but one of them in straight sets. He hasn’t dropped a set in his first four matches at Roland Garros. And while he cruised through his fourth-rounder on Sunday, his countryman was toiling in the heat for five hours against Stefanos Tsitsipas in the marathon match of the year. Is there any chance that Federer doesn’t win this? Wawrinka says he’ll be ready for a “big fight,” and the last time they played on Court Suzanne Lenglen, in 2015, he recorded his only win over Federer at a major, in three commanding sets. The surface should give Stan something of a chance; all three of his wins against Federer have come on clay. And it’s possible that his long hours on court against Tsitsipas were better preparation than Federer’s easy pickings through the first four rounds. Federer will have to adjust to a higher, fiercer level of play now. He probably will. Winner: Federer

Marketa Vondrousova vs. Petra Martic

The masses may leave after Federer-Wawrinka, but the tennis lovers will want to stick around for this display of finesse and subtle skill, even if they haven’t heard of the players. Vondrousova, 19, and Martic, 28, are both making their Grand Slam quarterfinal debuts, and the way they’re playing, they must feel as if they have a chance to go much farther. While Vondrousova is still in her teens, she has already faced Martic four times, and she has lost all four of those matches. But their most recent meeting, in the Istanbul final a month ago, was the first in which Vondrousova took a set (that was also was the only time they’ve met on clay). Since then, Vondrousova has only gotten better. While Martic has the bigger win in Paris, over No. 2 seed Karolina Pliskova, Vondrousova hasn’t been challenged at all. Winner: Vondrousova

Rafael Nadal vs. Kei Nishikori

Wawrinka and Nishikori are in similar boats: They have uphill climbs against legendary opponents, which have been made even steeper by the difficulty level of their fourth-round matches. Nishikori is 2-10 against Nadal, and 0-4 on clay—though he was leading Rafa in Madrid a few years ago before he hurt himself and had to retire. Now, after completing a five-set win over Benoit Paire on Monday, he’ll have to play Nadal without a rest day. It won’t help that Nishikori also won his third-round match in five sets. Kei has been clutch, but he may regret having to be. Winner: Nadal

Catch up on Week 1 at Roland Garros on the TENNIS.com Podcast:

Three to See, French Open Day 9: Thiem-Monfils; Zverev-Fognini; Halep

Sun, 02 Jun 2019 21:52:00 +0000

Before each day's play at the 2019 French Open, we'll preview three must-see matches.

Alexander Zverev vs. Fabio Fognini

At this stage of Roland Garros, just about every men’s match not featuring one of the Big 3 feels like it could be a five-setter. And that’s true for this fourth-round contest in Lenglen; Zverev has already played two five setters in this tournament, and Fognini has never been known for efficiency. Still, none of their three previous meetings have lasted longer than two sets. Zverev leads their head to head 2-1, but Fognini has the most recent and perhaps the most significant win, which came during his run to the Monte Carlo title in April. Zverev’s form has slowly, in dribs and drabs, improved since then, while Fognini hasn’t come close to matching what he did in Monaco. All of which leads me to think this one really might go five. Winner: Zverev

Dominic Thiem vs. Gael Monfils

What was I just saying about potential roller-coasters and marathons? This afternoon Chatrier showcase has both of those things written all over it. Or does it? Thiem has won all four of his previous meetings with Monfils, including two on clay. However long it lasts, though, the Frenchman and the Austrian should provide plenty of power, plenty of topspin, plenty of leaping, and plenty of GIF-able shotmaking moments. Each of these guys loves nothing more than to stand at the back of the arena and wail on the ball, and Chatrier gives them more room than just about any other court in the world to do it. Monfils will probably get the home folks’ hopes up for at least set, if not two, but Thiem will probably crush them in the end. Winner: Thiem

Simona Halep vs. Iga Swiatek

Iga, not Aga. Just a few months after Radwanska’s retirement, there’s a new Polish woman in town. Teenager, actually: Swiatek turned 18 earlier this week, so you might as well get used to watching her now. With her strong serve, point-ending forehand, and jumping backhand, Iga looks like the proverbial real deal—and not much like Aga. She also looks like someone who could give Halep in particular some trouble. The defending champion is going to want to make a high percentage of first serves, because Swiatek won’t waste any time pummeling her second serves when they sit up. But as promising as Iga looks, is she really ready to walk onto Chatrier and take out the woman who has made the last two finals there? I’m guessing Halep will make her play one ball too many—this time. Winner: Halep

Catch up on Week 1 at Roland Garros on the TENNIS.com Podcast:

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