Evelyn Reynolds

It takes grit for a tennis player at any level to bounce back quickly from losing 6-0, 6-0.Consider Sofia Kenin gritty.Kenin, the newest Grand Slam singles champion from the United States, got double bageled in Rome by Victoria Azarenka last month, but Kenin, not Azarenka, is in the fourth round of the French Open.And Kenin was certainly doing the math in her head on Saturday, when she rallied after an edgy start to reel off 12 straight games in her 6-2, 6-0 victory over Irina Bara, a qualifier from Romania.“Winning basically 12-love is obviously nice after what happened,” Kenin said with a laugh when we spoke. “Look, in Rome, Vika played really well, I’m not going to take anything away, but I had to move on. I knew the French was coming and it was more important for me to do well in the French than in Rome. Obviously, I want to do well in all tournaments, but if I had to pick, for sure Paris.”Paris was good to her last year, when she made her first big wave in a major by upsetting Serena Williams in the third round on Philippe Chatrier Court before losing to Ashleigh Barty, the eventual champion.Now Kenin is back in the fourth round while Barty is back home in Australia sitting out the rest of the 2020 season because of travel concerns during the coronavirus pandemic.But there are plenty of other threats left in the women’s draw, including Kenin’s next opponent. Fiona Ferro is unseeded, but she is at home in France and on red clay. Ferro, a great mover who slides with grace and rips her heavy forehand with ease, won the tour’s first event after its five-month hiatus: a clay-court tournament in Palermo, Italy.On Saturday, Ferro showed plenty of grit of her own to wear down Patricia Tig and win 7-6 (7), 4-6, 6-0.The French crowd, limited to 1,000 paid spectators per day by the French health authorities, still managed to generate plenty of noise and even a few boos when the feisty Tig started celebrating after Ferro’s errors in the grueling opening set.The jeers, like the cheers, were refreshing after so many months of silence at tournaments like the United States Open, which was held without fans.Kenin, like many of her peers, has already had enough of the “bubble life.”“I feel like all of us don’t like it for sure,” she said. “We all want to go out, but we can’t go out, because if you go out, you are disqualified and no one wants that of course. I know what to expect now with the mask and the social distancing and no crowds. But honestly, I feel like this is something I can never get used to, because this is completely not normal, and I obviously want it to be back to normal how it used to be. I miss the fans, really miss the fans.”She also has missed a certain window of opportunity after winning her first Grand Slam singles title at the Australian Open in early February, only to see sports shut down worldwide for months afterward.“It was quite devastating, obviously it wasn’t the best thing that happened, but this was the case for everybody and it just happened to be after I won,” Kenin said. “It is what it is. I try not to be so down, and just tried to keep myself motivated for once things would happen again.”Her unexpected run in Australia was brilliant and often bold, including a win over the American teenager Coco Gauff, who has, fairly or not, seen a much bigger spotlight than Kenin for those interested in emerging American tennis stars.Above all, Kenin came up with the goods in the third set of the final against Garbiñe Muguruza. Down 0-40 on her serve at 2-all, Kenin won five straight points: four with groundstroke winners and one with an ace to hold serve and then close out the victory.It was one of the great games in Grand Slam history, but it seems like ancient history at this stage with the pandemic rendering sports an afterthought. Sponsorship deals for new arrivals like Kenin have become more difficult to secure and tournament appearance fees were wiped out during the hiatus.“Definitely tough timing for her,” said John Tobias, a leading tennis agent who is executive vice president of GSE Worldwide. “But she is talented and consistent enough that it’s likely she will regain the commercial momentum she had earlier in the year. She’s the No. 1 American, top five in the world, 21 years old and marketable. That checks a lot of boxes for brands and tournaments.”Women’s tennis has often felt like roulette in recent years. There have been eight first-time major singles champions in the past 13 Grand Slam tournaments. Though Naomi Osaka has managed to win three major titles, other new arrivals have fallen back through slumps or injuries, including Sloane Stephens, Jelena Ostapenko and Bianca Andreescu.Will Kenin, 21, have more staying power? She certainly has the competitive drive as well as a perfectionist streak.In Paris, she has sometimes looked as dissatisfied with her winners as with her errors. There have been plenty of both. She went three sets in her first two rounds against unseeded opponents.“Obviously, I feel like I should get deep in a tournament,” Kenin said. “I’m a bit hard on myself.”But as she has proved since her junior days, she has an uncommon ability to reboot and briskly move on to the next point. Despite appearances, she has been enjoying herself on court: never more than when she can take back her racket with both hands for a backhand and bamboozle an opponent with a perfectly disguised drop shot.In this year’s heavy autumnal conditions, her signature shot is all the rage at Roland Garros, and she hit winners aplenty with it on Saturday.What happened in Rome seems to have stayed in Rome, and playing doubles with the upbeat veteran, Bethanie Mattek-Sands, seems to have helped her mood, too. But Kenin still needs to find surer footing and a higher gear on a slippery surface if she wants to become a multiple Grand Slam champion.“Believe it or not, I used to really hate clay,” she said. “But I learned to like it last year here, and I still do.”Karen Crouse contributed reporting. More

How to watch: 5 a.m. to noon on Tennis Channel; streaming on the Tennis Channel app and, starting at 11 a.m., on Peacock.With the first week of the French Open coming to a close, many top contenders, like Sofia Kenin and Novak Djokovic, can still beat up on lesser opponents. But some matches, by the luck of the draw, look less lopsided on paper.Here are some matches to keep an eye on.Because of the number of matches cycling through courts, the times for individual matchups are at best a guess and are certain to fluctuate based on the times at which earlier play is completed. All times are Eastern.SIMONNE MATHIEU COURT | 5 a.m.Kevin Anderson vs. Andrey RublevKevin Anderson, a two-time Grand Slam tournament finalist, has had two operations on his right knee within the last year. Anderson, who is 6 feet 8 inches tall, has always played a physical, fast-paced game more suited for grass and hardcourts. He is ranked 118th, but even on his least-favored surface, he remains a threat. He beat the No. 22 seed, Dusan Lajovic, in a tight five-set match on Thursday.Andrey Rublev, the 13th seed, won the German Open on the same day the French Open began. Rublev reached his first major quarterfinal at the United States Open this year behind a string of dynamic performances, including a four-set victory over Matteo Berrettini.Now, on the slower surface of the French Open, he has not been as dominant, needing five sets to push past Sam Querrey and four sets against Alejandro Davidovich Fokina. Rublev had been the strong favorite against both.With Anderson gaining faith that he’s still capable of deep runs at Grand Slam tournaments, this matchup should be tough on the red clay.Court 14 | 7 a.m.Aryna Sabalenka vs. Ons JabeurAryna Sabalenka, the eighth seed, is an explosive, powerful baseline player. Her ability to hit through the ball seems to be unaffected by clay, a surface that can dull all but the hardest shots. She lost early at the U.S. Open to Victoria Azarenka, an eventual finalist, but she has looked strong in the past few months, hurt mainly by her own inconsistency when powerful shots lead to unforced errors.Ons Jabeur, the 30th seed, is tidy, nifty and imaginative. Her shotmaking seems to be unbound by traditional strategy, making her a delightful improviser among titanic shot makers. She can still engage in baseline rallies, but she seems to choose not to on a whim. In that sense, she seems molded in the same style as Fabrice Santoro, a clay-court specialist who was known as the Magician.Sabalenka and Jabeur have not met before, but they are sure to highlight each other’s strengths and weaknesses.SIMONNE MATHIEU COURT | 10 a.m.Grigor Dimitrov vs. Roberto Carballés BaenaThrough the first two rounds, Grigor Dimitrov, the 18th seed, has shown himself to be cool and composed as he breaks down opponents. But he has not come up against a clay-court specialist yet. Now, in Roberto Carballés Baena, a true challenge has come into his path.Carballés Baena dispatched Steve Johnson in the first round while dropping only two games and followed that up with a much more impressive victory over the ninth seed, Denis Shapovalov, in five arduous sets. It was his first win in a fifth set and his first win over a top-10 player, and it gave him his first appearance in the third round of a Grand Slam tournament.While his victory may have given him belief, a five-set match can drain a player’s energy, especially on slow clay courts. If Dimitrov can attack early and secure the first set, it’s hard to know if there will be a road back into the match for Carballés Baena.SUZANNE LENGLEN COURT | 1 p.m.Danielle Collins vs Garbiñe MuguruzaGarbiñe Muguruza, the 2016 French Open champion, has not had the steadiest return to the WTA Tour after the coronavirus break. A second-round loss in the U.S. Open was a clear disappointment, but upon returning to clay, she fared slightly better. She lost in three sets to Simona Halep in the semifinals of the Italian Open but had also needed three sets to beat Coco Gauff and Azarenka earlier in the tournament. After again taking three sets to beat the 88th-ranked Tamara Zidansek in the first round at Roland Garros, it’s unclear whether Muguruza can regain the level of play that got her to the final of the Australian Open in January.Danielle Collins has similarly struggled to show her best game this year. After a semifinal appearance at the 2019 Australian Open, she has not made it past the third round of a Grand Slam. This is the furthest that Collins has made it at the French Open, but her competition has not been anywhere near the level that she will face on Saturday.Muguruza will most likely be able to settle in and move the American around the court well, dominating for long stretches of the match. It will be a test for her to see if she can contend later. More

PARIS — Roland Garros has gone down the rabbit hole this year, so it was perfectly logical that Sebastian Korda, who has three career ATP match victories, gushed on Friday that he would be “the happiest person on planet Earth” if his next opponent was Rafael Nadal, he of the 12 French Open titles.The 20-year-old Korda, ranked No. 213, dispatched Pedro Martínez, ranked No. 105, by 6-4, 6-3, 6-1 on Friday to set up his fourth-round dreamscape against the second-ranked Nadal.“I named my cat after him,” Korda said of Nadal, “so that explains a lot how much I love him.”Nadal advanced with a right-as-rain, 6-1, 6-4, 6-0, victory over Stefano Travaglia that restored a smidgen of normalcy on another day of Grand Slam tennis in ski jacket weather. Under stormy skies in Paris, there was enough turbulence in the draw to shake loose Stan Wawrinka, the 2015 champion. Wawrinka fell, 2-6, 6-3, 6-3, 4-6, 6-0, to Hugo Gaston, a wild-card entry from France ranked No. 239. For Gaston, 20, who also hadn’t won a tour-level match before this week, explaining how he beat Wawrinka seemed just as difficult as actually pulling it off. “It’s difficult to explain,” he said, adding, “Of course, for the moment it’s amazing for me. It’s a dream. But I try to stay focused.”In the best of years, the French Open is the most unpredictable of majors because of its slow clay surface, which can neutralize the power and speed of many elite players and has rescued from obscurity the likes of Argentina’s Gastón Gaudio, the 2004 men’s champion, and Iva Majoli, the 1997 women’s winner.But given that the event was moved from spring to autumn and contested with only a smattering of spectators because of the coronavirus pandemic, and that it is using a new brand of balls that Nadal has described as “slow and heavy,” this year’s edition has been even more unpredictable than most.Led by Korda, who turned professional in 2018, and Gaston, who turned pro last year, nine men ranked outside the top 100 advanced to the round of 32.The women’s draw has been no less volatile. The top seed, Simona Halep, the 2018 champion whose 6-0, 6-1 dismantling of Amanda Anisimova on Friday moved her one step closer to her third Grand Slam title, has been one of the few players to prop up the status quo. Thirteen seeded players reached the third round, the fewest since the singles draw was expanded to 32 seeds in 2001 at Wimbledon. Led by the 131st-ranked Nadia Podoroska, eight women outside the top 100 graced the round of 32.Podoroska, 23, of Argentina, posted a 6-3, 6-2 victory over No. 161 Anna-Karolina Schmiedlova to advance to the fourth round, where she will face the 114th-ranked Barbara Krejcikova, who survived a 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 challenge from the wild card Tsvetana Pironkova.Podoroska, who started the year ranked outside the top 250, won back-to-back small tournaments in Malibu, Calif., and Petit-Bourg, France, before the pandemic shut down competition for five months. Even with the interruption, Podoroska has managed to win 41 matches this year. This is her second Grand Slam main draw since she turned professional nine years ago, and she believes she has benefited from the relative calm and quiet on the grounds, where there is a 1,000-fan limit.“It’s good because I’m used to playing with no crowd,” Podoroska said. “For me it’s quite the same playing here or in the tournaments that I’ve been playing before.”Like Podoroska, Korda was playing well before the pandemic. He spent the shutdown working on his conditioning.“I just kind of put my head down and said, ‘You know what, this is happening right now. I can’t change anything about it,’” he said. “I really just tried to dial in and be super positive.”Less than two dozen fans convened on Court 7 to watch Korda’s rain-interrupted victory. They included a few ball girls who stayed after their matches and did not let the soggy weather dampen their enthusiasm for his style, which includes a big serve and a black headband that contains his unruly bangs.He played in front of more people when he won the junior title at the 2018 Australian Open. But it wasn’t the calm that helped him, he said. It was the three-match qualifying process.“I mean, I was pretty confident by passing through” qualifiers, Korda said. “I don’t think many people in the main draw actually played that many matches.”It figures that Korda would not be cowed by the challenge presented by Nadal, the reigning champion. The Korda family runs on competition. His father, Petr, is a former Australian Open champion. His mother, Regina, was a top-30 player. His two older siblings, Jessica and Nelly, have won titles on golf’s L.P.G.A. Tour.His sisters, who are playing in a tournament in New Jersey this week, have been sending him pep talks via text message.“Jess and I have been waking up early for every single one of his matches,” Nelly said. “He’s super excited. He’s worked really hard over this break we had the past couple months where we didn’t play sports. He deserves it.”Korda has Nadal’s full attention. “He’s playing great, he’s young, he has energy,” Nadal said. “He has a lot of ingredients to become a big star of this sport.”He added, “I think he has an amazing future — hopefully not yet.” More

Neither the pioneer nor the present-day popularizer of the underhand serve has been in Paris this year during the French Open.Michael Chang, who won the tournament with a clutch use of the serve in 1989, is back in the United States, spending time with his wife, Amber, and their three young children. Nick Kyrgios is back in Australia, spending time on social media as a freelance tennis critic, which should make for some testy conversations with his peers when he finally does return to the circuit in person.But Chang’s and Kyrgios’s legacy has been on frequent display in the first week of the Grand Slam tournament.Underhand serves, once broadly considered underhanded in the sport, have been popping up in the autumnal gloom like mushrooms in the French countryside.Peak season may have been Wednesday. In the stretch of a couple of hours, you could watch Alexander Bublik hold serve with an underhander (it seems time for a punchy, one-word term), see Sara Errani save a match point with one and watch Mackenzie McDonald save nothing at all with a floating, sacrificial offering of an underhander that the 12-time French Open champion Rafael Nadal pounced on for a return winner en route to a 6-0, 6-1, 6-3 victory.“If he’s winning, it’s a good tactic; if he’s losing, it’s a bad tactic,” Nadal said. He added that, for example, it was “not a good tactic” for Mackenzie. For Bublik, he said, “if that works,” it was “a good tactic.”Unfortunately for Bublik, it did not work often enough. He lost his second-round match to Lorenzo Sonego in a duel that was also brimming with other tennis exotica, like serve-and-volley tactics and tweeners.With Kyrgios taking a break because of the coronavirus pandemic, Bublik is clearly the standard-bearer for the underhander.“I’m missing my boy Nick here,” Bublik said in an interview. “We would do 25 in a week.”A tall and flickering talent from Kazakhstan, Bublik, like Kyrgios, has a thunderous first serve that only makes his underhanded efforts all the more unsettling for the opposition.It is the tennis equivalent of a changeup from a flame-throwing relief pitcher, but Bublik knows he cannot go to it too often, or the element of surprise is gone.He has been deploying it once or twice a match in recent tournaments. At the German Open last week, he aced Felix Auger-Aliassime with one in a first-round victory and aced Cristian Garin with another in a quarterfinal defeat, as Garin voiced his displeasure with the tactic.In Paris, he aced Gaël Monfils in the first round and Sonego at 4-5 in the opening set, before missing another underhand serve in the tiebreaker.Bublik actually prefers the term “underarm serve,” which has its supporters.“To be honest, serving a good underarm serve is very tough,” Bublik said. “I really practice.”That does seem the path forward, particularly after watching McDonald’s unsuccessful effort.“Mackie’s was terrible,” said Paul Annacone, the veteran coach and Tennis Channel analyst. “I think you should practice it a bit if you are going to use it. I do believe a good underarm serve is warranted in today’s game.”With leading players like Nadal and Dominic Thiem and rising players like Sonego often standing back by the line umpires to return, there is certainly room for a serve that is designed to function like a drop shot. Not only do underarm serves land closer to the net, they often pose a timing challenge, because the server does not make a long, high toss and instead flicks the ball forward at a moment when a windup would usually begin.“We have never had players stand back that far before to return serve,” Chang said on Wednesday night. “From a tactical standpoint, it makes logical sense.”Chang’s memorable underhand serve at the 1989 French Open was an act of desperation, not strategy. At age 17, he was facing the No. 1 seed, Ivan Lendl, in the fourth round and had rallied from a two-set deficit but was cramping badly in both legs in the fifth set.At one stage, Chang actually started walking toward the chair umpire, Richard Ings, to retire from the match, but he stopped short because he said he felt as if God was telling him to keep pushing.Serving at 4-3, 15-30 in the fifth set, Chang could feel that Lendl was on his way to breaking him again, and with his legs hurting, he decided, quite spontaneously, to try the first underhand serve of his career.It landed short, and a surprised Lendl managed to dash forward and return it, but he could not handle the subsequent Chang passing shot. Chang went on to hold serve to 5-3 and then to break Lendl, who double-faulted on match point. Chang won, 4-6, 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3.“If they play that match 20 times, Michael wins it once,” said Jose Higueras, Chang’s coach at the time.Chang went on to win the tournament, his only Grand Slam singles title, and more than 30 years later, it is that underhand serve that still sticks with those who remember his success; many mistakenly recall the Lendl match as the final.But surprisingly, in a sport where success quickly generates imitation, Chang’s masterstroke did not start a trend. That is partly because of an unwritten code that framed the shot negatively, as an unsporting, showboating attempt to make an opponent look bad.When Martina Hingis tried a couple of underhanders under duress against Steffi Graf in their tumultuous, irresistible French Open final in 1999, the French crowd turned against Hingis, who went on to lose.After Chang, no man attempted it in a high-profile match for decades. Ivo Karlovic, a towering Croat with one of the best serves in history, tried one that worked against Tommy Haas in 2007. But generally, when somebody did attempt the shot, as the Frenchman Mikael Llodra did a few times during his career, he practically had to apologize.“I was feeling so bad on court that I was just trying something fantastical to try to get a breath of fresh air,” Llodra said in 2011 after a lopsided loss to Robin Soderling.Another French player, Virginie Razzano, also tried a few during the 2010s when she was struggling with her serve. So did Errani, who has struggled with hers throughout her career and has resorted to the tactic more than any active player.On Wednesday, in a wild ride of a three-setter against Kiki Bertens, Errani served for the match at 6-5 in the third set and tried four consecutive service tosses without being able to pull the trigger. She finally went back to the underhand serve and lost the point. She later saved a match point with another underhander before losing, 7-6, 3-6, 9-7.“There are days where it is really bad,” Errani said, adding that she had “just tried to compete with everything I have.”But increasingly, the underhander has become a show of strength instead of weakness. Kyrgios, who relishes playing mind games with opponents, has brought it back into vogue, irking Nadal last year when he used it in Acapulco and then acing him with it again at Wimbledon.Nadal seems to have to come to terms with it — tennis’s rule book clearly allows it — but still views the trend through a moralistic lens.“If you do it with the goal to improve your game, or like a tactical thing, I support it 100 percent,” Nadal said Wednesday. “If you do it to disrespect the opponent, it is not a good thing. Everybody knows internally if you are doing it in a good way or a bad way.”Monica Niculescu tried an underhander against the feisty American Danielle Collins in the first round. Collins roared after she won the point but said it was not because she had taken umbrage.“I was just pumped I saw it coming,” she said. “I approve of people thinking outside the box and being creative.”Ultimately, the shot will thrive or wither based on results, and Chang, who tried it only once during his career, certainly liked his results.“I have never lost a point serving underhand,” he said.Ben Rothenberg and Karen Crouse contributed reporting. More

How to watch: 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the Tennis Channel; streaming on the Tennis Channel app.After many crowd favorites like Daniil Medvedev and Alison Riske lost in the first round of the French Open, Wednesday offers an opportunity for stability. The two main courts, Philippe Chatrier and Suzanne Lenglen, will be primarily populated by familiar faces, with five former major champions and two more tour finals champions on display. But the outside courts may provide some of the more interesting matches because they are less likely to be one-sided affairs.Here are some matches to keep an eye on.Because of the number of matches cycling through courts, the times for individual matchups are at best a guess and are certain to fluctuate based on the times at which earlier play is completed. All times are Eastern.COURT Suzanne Lenglen | 8 a.m.Dominic Thiem vs. Jack SockIn the first round, Dominic Thiem dispatched the former U.S. Open champion Marin Cilic in three sets. It helped allay questions about whether Thiem’s lack of preparation on red clay would harm his ability to perform after acclimating to hardcourts during his title run at the United States Open. Thiem, who finished as the runner-up at the past two French Opens, is using the first few rounds at Roland Garros as training fodder.On the other side of the net, Jack Sock is still working on bringing himself back to his highest level. In 2017, Sock was a semifinalist at the ATP Tour finals, an impressive feat for a player who had never reached the quarterfinal of a Grand Slam tournament. But Sock has struggled with his singles game since then, and he seemed to enjoy himself much more on the doubles court, winning a pair of Grand Slam titles and the ATP Tour finals alongside Mike Bryan.Sock’s singles ranking fell as low as 768th at the beginning of the year. Now, ranked 310th, he needed to go through the qualifying rounds before playing in the main draw. The road back to his best will be full of challenges, which Sock faces with humor by saying of Thiem, “I heard he played all right in New York.” Let’s hope he can properly keep his spirits up as he works his way back toward the heights of men’s tennis.COURT PHILIPPE CHATRIER | 7 a.m.Serena Williams vs. Tsvetana PironkovaSerena Williams, ranked ninth, came back from a breakdown in her first set against Kristie Ahn to win in a tiebreaker before storming through the second set without losing a game. Following a pattern we saw with some regularity in the U.S. Open, Williams can start some of her matches slowly before coming into form and dominating.For this reason, some question whether Williams is capable of chasing down a 24th Grand Slam singles title. While some criticism is fair, it’s undeniable that Williams is still a contender, having reached at least the semifinals at five of her nine major tournaments since returning to the WTA tour.Tsvetana Pironkova lost to Williams in the quarterfinals in a tight three-set match, and looked dominant in her first-round victory over Andrea Petkovic. Pironkova, a quarterfinalist at the 2016 French Open, has not always favored clay courts, which are much different from the grass courts on which she thrives.Williams will be a heavy favorite, but if Pironkova can start well there is a chance she can overwhelm the 23-time Grand Slam champion.Court 13 | 9 a.m.Casper Ruud vs. Tommy PaulCasper Ruud, the son of the former player Christian Ruud, became the first Norwegian to win an ATP title, in February at the Argentina Open on clay. In the run-up to the French Open, he reached the semifinals at the Italian Open and the German Open, losing to Novak Djokovic and Andrey Rublev.Ruud, 21, is a natural clay-court player, using his consistency to exhaust and draw errors out of his opponents. In the longer, five-set format of the French Open, these strengths are complemented even more. Even if an opponent can grab a set off Ruud, his ability to entrench deep in the court and absorb pressure will serve him well.Tommy Paul, ranked 58th, had his best Grand Slam result at the Australian Open, reaching the third round before losing to Marton Fucsovics. In Melbourne, Paul defeated Grigor Dimitrov in five sets, but that defeat was soon forgotten as Dimitrov trounced Paul in their first-round meeting at the U.S. Open.Paul, naturally a good hardcourt player, has struggled with consistency on his backhand side. The two-hander tends to feel somewhat stilted, especially when put in contrast with Paul’s smooth forehand strokes. It is likely that Ruud will target his backhand with a variety of shots to figure out which will extract the largest number of errors.Court 14 | 5 a.m.Sara Errani vs. Kiki BertensKiki Bertens, the fifth seed, was a semifinalist at the 2016 French Open, but has failed to make it into the second week of competition in Paris since then. Her struggles on clay seem to have continued, as she lost in the first round at the Italian Open as well as a tournament in Strasbourg, France.Bertens does have some variability in her game, which can help throw off opponents who would rather settle into long repetitive points. If she can settle herself and limit unforced errors, she may still be able to put together a run.Sara Errani, a former French Open finalist, last played in the main draw of a Grand Slam event at the 2018 French Open. After failing a drug test in 2017 and subsequently having her ban retroactively extended in 2018, she struggled to return to the level of competition necessary to succeed on the WTA tour.However, Errani is well known as a clay-court specialist, and after storming through the qualification rounds without dropping a set, she dismantled Monica Puig in the first round in under an hour, losing only three games. The former world No. 5 will be a tough test for Bertens as she attempts to shake off her clay-court collywobbles. More

Kristina Mladenovic had reason to complain after blowing a 5-1 lead at a Grand Slam tournament for the second time this month.As rain roiled play elsewhere at the French Open on Tuesday afternoon, Mladenovic quickly took her comfortable lead in the first set of her opening-round match under the new retractable roof over Philippe Chatrier Court against Laura Siegemund. Then, just as at the United States Open, it all came undone.On her first set point, Mladenovic hit a sharp, short backhand drop shot which Siegemund hurtled toward, reaching her racket under the ball and sending it barely back across the net.Mladenovic could not return it, but immediately appealed to the chair umpire, Eva Asderaki-Moore, saying that her drop shot had bounced twice before Siegemund reached it. When Asderaki-Moore shook her head in disagreement, Mladenovic covered her mouth in disbelief, but protested no further.Slow-motion replays later confirmed that the ball indeed bounced twice, meaning Mladenovic should have won the point and the set.Siegemund won the next two points, holding serve to pull to 2-5. Mladenovic had a second set point in the next game, and five more in the game after that, but could not convert any. Having saved seven set points, the last six without controversy, Siegemund leveled the first set and went on to win it and the match by a final score of 7-5, 6-3.Though Mladenovic admitted she “still had the result in my hands,” she said her mind-set was clouded by the missed call.“Probably I put a little bit less intensity in my focus,” Mladenovic said. “Even though I tried, I was a little bit away, I was still in that point thinking, ‘OK, I should have been in the second set already.’ It wasn’t easy.”Mladenovic blew an even bigger lead in her last singles match; in the second round of the United States Open earlier this month, Mladenovic led, 6-1, 5-1, and did not convert four match points in a 1-6, 7-6 (2), 6-0 loss to Varvara Gracheva.Mladenovic said her collapse in New York should not be compared to the one in Paris. “Because the set was mine,” she said. “It was just unlucky for me that the chair umpire didn’t do her job.”Mladenovic said she didn’t expect Siegemund to concede the point on her own. “But if she would have done it, she would have all my respect and be super fair play,” Mladenovic said. “Yeah, this thing didn’t happen. But she’s not the one responsible. I think the chair umpire is the one that should be really focused on that call.”Siegemund also believed the officials should be solely responsible for making the right call.“Depends on the situation: if it’s a close call and it’s a set point against you, I think it’s the umpire’s responsibility,” Siegemund said. “I’m coming running full speed; if in that call I say, ‘Oh, it was a double bounce,’ and later I see on the video it was not, I would be angry at myself.”Siegemund, who won the mixed doubles title at the U.S. Open this month, also emphasized Mladenovic’s bevy of other opportunities to close out the first set.“There is a lot more room to close the set,” Siegemund said. “But if you want to jump on that one, you know, go ahead.”Both Siegemund and Mladenovic agreed that video replay review, which has never been used to adjudicate such calls in tennis, would be a welcome innovation.“To err is human,” Mladenovic said of the umpire. “Unfortunately, she will continue at Roland Garros; I will not continue at Roland Garros.”The missed call was only the latest in a series of September setbacks for Mladenovic. After her singles loss at the U.S. Open, she was disqualified from the doubles draw, where she was part of the top-seeded pair with Timea Babos, because she was identified as among a group of players who had spent time with Benoit Paire, who tested positive for the coronavirus.Mladenovic, who had been playing under tighter conditions than other competitors, was forced to isolate in her hotel for eight more days after her disqualification, hurting her preparation for the European swing on clay, her best surface.“I’m going to try to be a philosopher, and tell myself that if this has to happen, it has to happen in 2020, because seriously, it’s a hell of a year,” Mladenovic said. “I’m not sure what to say, I’m just wondering, why? Why does this happen? Why this sequence of bad spells?” More

At the only Grand Slam tournament where marathon matches are still allowed to drift endlessly into the unknown, Lorenzo Giustino and Corentin Moutet took more than six hours to finish Monday what had started a day earlier at the French Open.Giustino, an Italian qualifier ranked 157th, prevailed, 0-6, 7-6 (7), 7-6 (3), 2-6, 18-16, over the 71st-ranked Moutet of France. The match started Sunday but was suspended after nearly two hours because of rain, with Giustino leading by 4-3 in the third set. It resumed on Monday and ultimately lasted six hours five minutes, split between the two days.After rule changes instituted at the Australian Open and Wimbledon last year, each of the four Grand Slam tournaments now ends deadlocked final sets in its own fashion. The U.S. Open holds a first-to-seven tiebreaker at 6-6. The Australian Open has a first-to-10 tiebreaker at 6-6. And Wimbledon waits until 12-12 to play a first-to-seven tiebreaker.At the French Open, however, no such finish line has been drawn onto the powdery red clay surface: Final sets of main-draw singles matches continue beyond 6-6 until a player has a two-game lead.Giustino, who played his first Grand Slam main draw only earlier this year in Melbourne, did not realize the unique rule at Roland Garros until he was watching a first-round match Sunday between Jurij Rodionov and Jérémy Chardy, which Rodionov won, 10-8, in the fifth set.“I said, ‘No, there is no tiebreaker in the fifth?’” Giustino recalled asking his coach. “I said, ‘No, way, man.’ And so my coach said, ‘You know that you will go like 12-10, something like that, in the fifth.’ I always do like this in my matches — and look what happened.”Giustino indeed went long in qualifying even though tiebreakers were used. He won in a final-set tiebreaker in his first-round qualifying match, and 7-5 in the third set of his second round qualifying match.Monday’s match, perhaps surprisingly, did not break any records, coming in as the fourth-longest match in Grand Slam history, and the second-longest at the French Open by elapsed time. It did equal the mark for most games in the fifth set of a French Open match, tying the 34 games in which Paul-Henri Mathieu beat John Isner in 2012, and in which Facundo Bagnis defeated Julien Benneteau in 2014.Both those matches also featured French players, each packing thousands into the stands. But in this pandemic-era Grand Slam event, where the French government has capped spectators at 1,000 per day, Moutet was not able to even have his relatives who live near Roland Garros in attendance.“I am used to sharing it with my loved ones every year; it wasn’t possible this year,” Moutet said. “It’s a shame, but hey, it’s for the good of all, and it’s necessary. There are things that are more important than our well-being as tennis players.”As word of the interminable fifth set spread around the grounds, however, a decent contingent of people flocked to Court 14 to watch the conclusion.“It was really cool they came to see me, to encourage me, despite the small audience,” said Moutet, who spent some of his free time during the coronavirus hiatus writing and performing moody piano-driven rap music.“Frankly, there was everything for me to win this game, finally. Everyone did everything to make me win this game. I failed to win,” Moutet said. “It sure hurts.”Giustino, who is part of a deep crop of rising talent in Italian men’s tennis, said he thought he spotted some of his compatriots urging him on from the stands of Court 14, but he couldn’t be confident who was behind every mask.“I saw people who were trying to give me energy, and I thought, OK, this guy is not French for sure,” he said.After the longest match of his career, Giustino joked that he was ready for more.“Perfect,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll go run a bit because I think I’m too fresh.”The match had ripple effects beyond Giustino, who will be a considerable underdog in the next round against the 12th-seeded Diego Schwartzman. It delayed all remaining matches scheduled on Court 14, including the one immediately after, which featured a three-time Grand Slam champion.Angelique Kerber, who needs only a French Open title to win each of the four Grand Slam events during her career, said she “was warming up more than 10 times” as she anticipated many possible finishes to the match that never came.“I couldn’t find my rhythm, especially at the beginning of the first set,” Kerber said after losing, 6-3, 6-3, to Kaja Juvan.The final match scheduled for Court 14, between Arantxa Rus and Clara Burel, was ultimately relocated to Court 7, but still became the first match in French Open history to finish after midnight, after the Grand Slam tournament in the City of Lights finally installed some for the first time this year.Burel won, 6-7 (7), 7-6 (2), 6-3, at 12:10 a.m. on Tuesday. That, of course, was a French Open record. More

It’s an old story. A venture to Paris filled with hopes for sun and blue skies. Instead, the air is cold and blustery, the skies are gray and there is some rain, too.It is hardly great tennis weather this week, and it is definitely not French Open weather at Roland Garros. And that is wreaking all kinds of havoc for players used to dripping with sweat under the late-spring sun and seeing balls jump off their rackets, fly through the warm, dry air, and pop off the usually hard red clay.With temperatures stuck in the mid 50s, a crisp wind and intermittent rain throughout the first day of the tournament, Simona Halep, Coco Gauff and Johanna Konta were among those wearing tights and long sleeves. Andy Murray wore tights, too, as he lost to Stan Wawrinka, who wore a short-sleeved turtleneck.The wardrobe changes may help the world’s top tennis players adjust their body temperatures, but adapting to a ball that feels like a rock coming off their strings may prove harder.Victoria Azarenka, a United States Open finalist who made quick work of Danka Kovinic in her first-round match Sunday, had a warning the other day for anyone hoping for some semblance of what this tournament has delivered in the past.“It’s not going to be a regular Roland Garros where the balls bounce high enough and the courts are fast,” Azarenka said. “We will have to adapt every day.”“It’s cold, it’s heavier, it’s more difficult,” said Dominic Thiem, who won the U.S. Open two weeks ago on the strength of his searing forehand.Getting warm is one thing. Thermodynamics is another.Rafael Nadal, the 12-time French Open champion who will play a first-round match against Egor Gerasimov of Belarus on Monday, is not so happy, especially since his game relies on super-heavy topspin that makes his shots bounce above the eyes of his opponents.“These are new balls and balls that are much slower than in previous years,” Nadal said during a news conference after training last week. “But given the cold and humid conditions, they are very short.”Indeed, in addition to changing the timing of the tournament from spring to fall because of the pandemic, tournament organizers did change their ball sponsor and supplier to Wilson from Babolat. But Guy Forget, the tournament director, said the Wilson ball passed a series of performance tests and no ball can overcome the inevitable effects of the chilly and damp weather conditions that are expected to continue in the coming days.Cool humidity makes the ball wet, and subsequently heavier. A wet ball also picks up clay, which also adds weight.There are also far less obvious forces that will jostle the memories of anyone who endured a high school physics class.Warmer temperatures increase the speed and kinetic energy of the molecules inside the ball. When a ball hits the ground, it compresses, then springs back to its full size. The faster those molecules move, the more kinetic energy and bounce they produce.Also warm air is slightly less dense than cold air, allowing a ball to travel faster and longer because there is less drag, especially with a tennis ball, which does not have a smooth surface.“How much faster will depend on the assumed temperature difference between warm and cold weather,” said Adrian Bejan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University and an expert in thermodynamics.Bejan said higher humidity can help and on a hardcourt, damp air, which is a little less dense than dry air, might allow the ball to move faster. But the additional clay that the damp ball picks up during each point may very well diminish that effect.“Some of those balls we were using you wouldn’t give to a dog to chew,” said Daniel Evans of Britain, who lost to Kei Nishikori of Japan in five sets on Sunday. “It’s tough to get that ball to go anywhere.”Forget, who was once ranked as high as No. 4 in men’s singles, had this advice for players obsessing about the nontraditional behavior of the ball at a time when nothing about Grand Slam tennis is as it usually is: Deal with it, just as you would deal with the slippery grass that characterizes the first few days of play at Wimbledon compared with the hard, dry ground during the second week of the tournament.“This is part of what tennis is, playing in different conditions,” Forget said. “You have to adjust to it.”Adjustments can be both psychological and technical. The most basic move that players are making is loosening their strings. Looser stings increase the trampoline effect. John Isner, the big-serving American, has lowered the tension of his strings by roughly 15 percent.Not everyone is feeling bothered by the changes.“Me, I like the balls,” said Daniil Medvedev, the rising Russian with a quirky arsenal who has struggled to advance at Roland Garros and plays his first-round match Monday. “Tennis is a fun and interesting sport. Sometimes one player doesn’t like something, but another player will like it. So far, I love it.”As it nearly always does at Roland Garros, the conversation may begin and end with the performance of Nadal. He struggled at the Italian Open earlier this month. That tournament also took place in cooler than usual temperatures, and Nadal lost in straight sets on clay against Diego Schwartzman as his ball lacked its usual life.Nadal spent much of the pandemic training in the balmy climate of Mallorca, Spain, where he is from. One day into the tournament in Paris, one thing is very clear — he is not in Mallorca anymore.“We have to stay positive,” he said. “We have to play with these balls, I have to find the best game.”Karen Crouse contributed reporting from Paris. More