French Open Round-Up

The French Open concluded yesterday with Rafael Nadal cementing his legacy as the greatest clay court player ever, winning his 10th French Open with a workman-like straight set win over an error prone Stan Wawrinka.

Nadal was a prohibitive favorite and he showed why, not dropping a set the entire tournament and never losing more than four games in any one set. It was complete and utter domination. The rest of the men's play was also pretty lackluster, highlighted by Dominic Thiem's rout of Novak Djokovic in the quarterfinals. Djokovic has lost his mojo recently and looked particularly disinterested as he got bageled in the deciding set. Thiem returned the favor in the semis, getting bageled by Nadal in their third and final set.

The ladies tournament was expected to be far more interesting, with well over half a dozen players considered to have a legitimate shot at winning it, in one of the most wide open draws in memory. But no one was expecting a 19 year old Latvian, ranked 47th in the world, to battle her way through three set match after three set match and take the title. Jelena Ostapenko turned 20 on the day of her semifinal win over Timea Bacsinszky, who remarkably was celebrating her own birthday on that day. But Ostapenko played like a ten year veteran the entire tournament, remaining cool under pressure in every tight match. And there were plenty of them as Ostapenko had to go the three set distance in five of her seven matches. In the final, she defeated Simona Halep, coming back from a 0-3,-0-40 deficit in the second set to extend it to a deciding set where she again came from behind to win 6-3 and take the title. Ostapenko was capable of hitting five consecutive pretty bad errors followed by eight consecutive astounding winners. When asked about that in her post-match interview, she basically replied that she knew if she stayed aggressive she would start making those shots. Ah, the wisdom of youth.

Halep had made it to the final by defeating Elena Svitolina in the quarters and Karolina Pliskova in the semis, both in three sets. Svitolina, who had been the most in-form player coming into the tournament, was actually down 1-5 to qualifier Petra Martic in round 4 but rallied to win six games in a row, with help from Martic, to move on to the quarters. Once there, Svitolina returned to favor to Halep by blowing a 5-2 lead in the second after winning the first. And once Halep took the second set in a tiebreaker, the third set did not last too long as Svitolina totally collapsed and lost 6-0.

As far as my predictions went, I had 3 of the four finalists and I'm pretty sure no one had Ostapenko winning it, much less making it to the final.

Lastly, it was another dismal tournament for the Americans as no one on either side of the singles draw made it to the Monday of the second week. We were more successful in the doubles with USA's Ryan Harrison and Michael Venus overcoming USA's Donald Young and Santiago Gonzales in the men's doubles finals and Bethanie Mattek-Sands continuing to win women's doubles titles with Lucy Safarova. And there were two Americans in the girls singles final where Whitney Osuigwe defeated Claire Liu, providing, once again, some hope for the future. But that has been the state of US tennis for nearly a decade...