Article translated by Tommaso Villa
In Paris, the talk of the tennis town is the pandemic, obviously, closely followed by the low temperatures of this French Open, the rain, the heavy courts, the even heavier balls, and the struggle to end the points quickly, although not all matches last as long as Giustino vs Moutet, which took six hours and five minutes to complete, albeit spread over two days.
THE MEN’S TOURNAMENT – Factor in that many athletes arrived in Paris with little or no familiarity with the clay, since many have played close to no matches and have struggled to train as well – such tangents are upset harbingers.
Rafa Nadal has been complaining about the new Wilson balls – a great indirect ad for Babolat (I’m not stating he did it because he has played with Babolat racquets his whole life, before the hate mail and the trolling begin; there are so many other good manufacturers, starting with Dunlop) – and he is the hands down favourite to win the tournament, so it can be imagined how everybody else, not as muscular as he, might be feeling about them. It is indeed true that the lower bounce hinders his game, but how many players can boast biceps as big as Rafa’s to keep up their baseline aggression with no drops in their performance?
Does Djokovic have that sheer power? Maybe not. Does Thiem have it? Maybe so. Few players seem able to charge their shots like the Austrian who reached two finals and two semi-finals in the last four editions. Djokovic is the N.1 returner and an extraordinarily grinding counterpuncher, but a defensive style is often unsustainable if the balls are heavy – could he suffer from it?
It seems to me that Mats Wilander is right – I have attended close to 160 consecutive Majors, so I had never watched so much Game, Schett & Mats content on Eurosport as I have this last month… – when he says that there is no clear-cut favourite, but that the potential winners are these three (Nadal, Djokovic, Thiem) while everyone else lags far behind, particularly in the bottom half of the draw, where whoever might be harbouring finalist ambitions would have to beat both Nadal and Thiem before facing Nole on the third Sunday, much like the last of the Horatians had to do slay the three Curiatians in the ancient Roman legend.
Who else has a powerful game that isn’t utterly serve-dependant, since it won’t be easy to win many free points with the first shot? Matteo Berrettini has the forehand to do it, but his serve (the least renounceable weapon in his arsenal) will be blunted by the surface. However, his excellent drop shot will be even more important in these conditions. If a player has a good touch, it is pretty hard for an opponent to get the ball off the ground and instil some pace once it’s landed on the soaked surface. Berrettini’s greatest hurdle will be the need not to lose his focus when the serve won’t fetch him the usual bountiful of points. However, the shot might still set up many quick wins for him anyway, in the event of high percentages with the first serve. After today’s debut with Pospisil, his draw isn’t easy (he could face Struff, a player with similar qualities, in the third round) but he could still make it to the quarter finals showdown with Djokovic, unless the Serbian loses along the way, but against whom? Khachanov, maybe? Well, the Russian has tons of power, and he reached the final eight in Paris last year as well as getting to the third round as a youngster in the two editions before the last one. Karen occasionally lacks in patience and always lacks in mobility, given his Gargantuan frame.
Medvedev is already out, as I thought after seeing the draw – I even wrote it. This is his fourth consecutive loss in the first round of the French Open, so it’s not a matter of heavy courts or heavy balls for him. Daniil even lives in France, so he should be able to find some time to train on the clay a bit more. Behind the three favourites, I would point to Tsitsipas, although the Greek, alas, has developed the bottling habit, losing a couple matches he’d already won, against Coric at Flushing Meadows after wasting six match points and against Rublev in the Hamburg final, when he got broken at 5-3 in the third while serving for the title. At the same time, Tsitsipas can really play on the dirt, despite the no show in Rome against Sinner; he’s reached a final in Madrid and a semifinal in Rome, so let’s not count him out. Especially as an underdog.
Zverev is another guy who is capable of reaching the highest highs and lowest lows, and he could be more dangerous than Berrettini and of Monfils, who’s already been knocked out. The question mark with him pertains the scars that he might still have due to those 15 double faults in the Flushing Meadows final. We cannot know how he’s coping, but a player who has won in Madrid and Rome and reached the quarters twice in Paris is certainly able to upset anybody as well, before perhaps losing against a less gifted opponent in the next round. The years go by, and Wawrinka isn’t the same player he used to be, as was fully on display in Rome, but if there is a player who can thrive in these conditions, that’s Stan the Man. He’s admitted it himself, as he’s never lacked the power to hit through a wild boar. To summarise, the court-and-ball factor can’t be overlooked, as it might upend technical assumptions that would be valid everywhere else.
THE WOMEN’S DRAW – The same goes for the ladies. How are the skinnier ones going to spice their shots up? I thought that Muguruza would be at home with these balls (balls that are not good enough “to play with your dog,” according to Dan Evans), and instead she had to scratch her way out of her first round match against Zidansek – 8-6 in the decider. Serena Williams struggled but then shrugged off Kristie Ahn without dropping sets, while last year’s runner-up Vondrousova got steamrolled and Zavatska broke her strings thrice, having to borrow her coach’s racquet to conclude her losing effort against Bertens! We are indeed witnessing a strange tournament.
In both draws, a considerable number of seeds already bowed out, a phenomenon that I once more attribute to the peculiar environment. The women’s draw had a losing K factor, since yesterday Keys, Kerber and Kuznetsova got eliminated (the day before it was Konta, Kontaveit, Kovinic and Korpatsch… Kenin would better keep her guard up today!), but the defeats of other strong athletes like Vondrousova, Yastremska and Muchova lead me to believe that Nadal is right, even though he might just being superstitious about his chase for his 13th French Open (not a good number then…) and for his 20th Major.
