French Open (Tennis)

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      It’s the French Open. Why Can’t the French Win?

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      PARIS — The most prominent feature of the French Open is that this Grand Slam tournament takes place on the rusty red clay of Roland Garros, a beloved feature that is as much a part of local culture and tradition as the bouquinistes that sell art and used books along the Seine.And yet, as it so often is in the country that claims Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir, the relationship between France and its “terre battue” is a little more complicated.This red clay that comes from a small brick factory in Oise, north of Paris, elicits so much love.“My favorite surface,” said Stéphane Levy, a lifelong member of the Tennis Club of Paris, a favorite haunt of some of the country’s top players, including Gilles Simon and Corentin Moutet, where eight of the 18 courts are made from the same clay as those at Roland Garros.“There is no feeling like playing on it,” Levy said. “The sliding, the clay on your body when you sweat.”But the clay has also become a symbol of deep frustration. A Frenchwoman has not won the singles championship this country so treasures, the one that requires more grit but also more thought than any other, since Mary Pierce in 2000. A Frenchman has not won it in 39 years, since Yannick Noah in 1983. The last of the French men and women were eliminated from the singles tournaments on Saturday.Why?There are 800 children taking part in the tennis school of the Tennis Club of Paris.Players and coaches of the club’s second men’s team gathered before an interclub match.The answer likely has a lot to do with a central contradiction in the home of red clay’s biggest stage. Just 11.5 percent of the tennis courts in France are made of the traditional red clay and most of those are in private clubs. Another 16.5 percent of courts are made of an imitation clay surface that is similar to the terre battue but plays harder and faster than the softer, traditional clay.Maintaining red clay in cold, wet weather, which is common in France for much of the year, is practically impossible, and building indoor complexes for them is expensive. So most French tennis players grow up playing on hardcourts, unlike their counterparts in Spain, where temperate weather and red clay dominate the way Rafael Nadal (who won Sunday in five sets) and so many Spaniards before him have dominated Roland Garros.That tennis at the highest level is contested on different surfaces is as normal to tennis fans as fuzzy yellow balls and grunting forehands, but it is one of the great quirks of the sport. Imagine for a moment if the N.B.A. played 70 percent of its games on hardwood, 20 percent on rubber and 10 percent on rag wool carpeting. That is essentially what professional tennis players do, spending the first three months on hardcourts, the next two on clay, roughly six weeks on grass, and then most of the rest of the year back on hardcourts.While the surfaces have become more similar in recent years, each requires a unique set of skills and produces a very different style of play.Grass and clay are at the extremes, with grass being the fastest of the three surfaces. A player from the Mont Rouge Tennis Club in action in an inter-club men’s match.Valentin Simon, left, the son of professional player Gilles Simon, and Jules Haehnel, center, the son of Jérome Haehnel, best known for defeating Andre Agassi in 2004 at Roland Garros, taking a lesson from Benjamin Marty.Clay is the slowest. The ball pops off the dirt and hangs in the air for a split-second longer, allowing players to catch up with it and extend rallies, and forcing them to play a more tactical style, grinding from the baseline.Watch an hour of pro tennis on each surface. If you cut out all the time between points, actual tennis playing on clay accounts for about 13 minutes, according to multiple studies of energy and effort in the sport. That is significantly more than on other surfaces, where the player returning serve is at a more severe disadvantage and can struggle to put the ball back in play.Hard courts are at roughly the halfway point, and require an all-around game.Among the pros, the red clay is both loved and loathed.“I don’t like it much,” said Daniil Medvedev of Russia, the world’s second ranked male player, who struggled for years to win a match at the French Open and reached the fourth round on Saturday.Nick Kyrgios of Australia has no use for the surface and skips the clay-court season altogether. Iga Swiatek of Poland, the world’s top-ranked woman, would spend her whole career sliding around on it if she could.Edouard Villoslada, 22, practiced his serve under the eye of a former ATP player, Aurelio Di Zazzo, on one of the clay courts at the Tennis Club of Paris.Members of the club playing on the indoor courts.Winning on clay requires a Ph.D. in what coaches and players call “point construction,” which is shorthand for playing tennis like chess, thinking not only about this next shot, but three shots down the line. Learning that to the point where it is instinctual can take years, and like most things, the earlier one starts training the brain to think that way, the better.“On clay, the fight really goes on and on,” said Aurelio Di Zazzo, a coach at the Tennis Club of Paris. “The longer the effort, the more you have to use your mind.”The club, which is less than a mile from Roland Garros, tries to carry red clay’s torch as best it can. That torch is not cheap. Maintaining the courts requires four full-time employees, and new clay costs more than $2,000 a year for each court. Each court must be entirely dug up and redone every 15 years, costing more than $30,000 per court.Levy said it is worth it.“This clay is a part of France,” he said.France’s tennis federation agrees. The organization also really wants a French Open singles champion. It is scheduled to announce a new plan to promote tennis on the “terre battue” in July. Perhaps that can help. More

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      It’s Djokovic vs. Nadal, the French Open Rematch We’ve Been Waiting For

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      Djokovic, the world No. 1, and Nadal, the 13-time French Open champion, will continue their epic rivalry on Tuesday in the quarterfinal at Roland Garros.PARIS — As the kids like to say these days, it’s on.Far sooner than many may have hoped, Novak Djokovic, the reigning French Open champion, will take on Rafael Nadal, a 13-time champion at Roland Garros, in a quarterfinal match on Tuesday, the first rematch of two of the leading men’s players since their epic semifinal last June.It took some of Nadal’s greatest tennis to survive a five-set, four-hour, 21-minute thriller Sunday evening against Felix Auger-Aliassime of Canada, but the match that so many crave is on the horizon.“A huge challenge and probably the biggest one that you can have here in Roland Garros,” Djokovic said, anticipating Nadal, after his fourth straight-sets win, 6-1, 6-3, 6-3, a pummeling of Diego Schwartzman of Argentina. “I’m ready for it.”Perhaps more than Nadal, who survived one of the great scares of his storied French Open career against Auger-Aliassime, the athletic and tireless Canadian with a booming serve and big forehand.“We have a lot of history together,” Nadal said of Djokovic.They have played each other 58 times, with Djokovic holding a 30-28 edge. It is a classic clash of styles, Nadal blasting away and running wild on the clay, his favorite surface, and Djokovic bringing his exquisite timing, incomparable steel, and the most varied arsenal in the game.Even more, it is a clash of two men whose personalities and trajectories, especially over the past year, have pushed them into different realms of the sport and public consciousness. One is a beloved citizen of the world, the other a polarizing, outspoken iconoclast so set in his beliefs that he was prepared to spend his last prime years on the sidelines rather than receive a vaccination against Covid-19.There were scattered boos as Djokovic was introduced on the Suzanne Lenglen Court on Sunday. Fans at the main court, Philippe Chatrier, chanted “Rafa, Rafa,” through the evening, urging on the Spanish champion who is immortalized with a nine-foot statue outside the stadium.Since Djokovic pulled off the nearly impossible by beating Nadal at last year’s French Open, Nadal has been jousting indirectly with his chief rival.Novak Djokovic beat Diego Schwartzman in straight sets on Sunday to advance to the quarterfinals against Nadal.Julien De Rosa/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDjokovic mounted an all-out quest last year to pull ahead of Nadal and Roger Federer in Grand Slam tournament titles and nearly did it, evening the Big Three at 20 wins each for six months and coming within one match of surging ahead. Nadal, who largely ended his 2021 season after the French Open because of a chronic foot injury, said finishing his career with the most major championships mattered little to him.Djokovic has refused to get vaccinated and questioned established science. Nadal got vaccinated long ago, because, he said, he is a tennis player and in no position to question what experts say is best for public health.Djokovic has tried to spearhead an independent players organization, the Professional Tennis Players Association, which he launched with a handful of other players in 2020. Nadal has refused to join the group and remains a member of the player council of the ATP, which has kept Djokovic’s organization on the outside of the sport’s decision-making process.On the court, they have captured each other’s most treasured possessions. After beating Nadal in the semifinals last year, Djokovic erased a two-set deficit and beat Stefanos Tsitsipas in the final to win his second French Open title.In January, after being largely inactive for six months, unsure whether his foot would ever allow him to play again, Nadal won the Australian Open, which Djokovic had won nine times, more than any other Grand Slam tournament.Djokovic had won three consecutive Australian Opens and traveled to the country expecting to be allowed to defend his titles. He had tested positive for Covid-19 and recovered in mid-December. He thought that was supposed to gain him entry into the country despite its strict rules prohibiting unvaccinated visitors. He was detained at the border and deported after government officials deemed his stance against vaccinations a threat to public health.As the controversy unfolded, Nadal said in some ways he felt sorry for his rival, then kicked a bit of dirt at Djokovic, who was locked in a Melbourne hotel with asylum seekers.“He knew the conditions since a lot of months ago,” Nadal said, “so he makes his own decision.”The shadow sparring has continued in Paris. Djokovic complained that the ATP had not involved his player organization in its discussions with Wimbledon after the tournament barred players from Russia and Belarus in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The tour responded by announcing it would not award rankings points for the event, a move Nadal defended as necessary for protecting all players.They even have different approaches to their careers. Djokovic said Sunday that being ranked No. 1 was “was always the highest goal beginning every season, particularly being in the era with Federer, Nadal.”A few hours later, Nadal, currently ranked fifth, said he never paid any attention to his ranking. Just a number. Not important to him.With their showdown now less than 48 hours away, the conversation has turned to whether they will play during the day or night, with each making his preference known to tournament organizers.Djokovic, left, and Nadal in their semifinal match at the 2021 French Open.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesNadal favors playing during the day, when the weather is warmer, and the ball bounces high off the clay, right into his wheelhouse, and flies off his racket.Djokovic excels at night, especially in Australia and at the U.S. Open, when conditions are colder and slower. His match against Nadal last year turned when the sun went down, the temperature dropped and Nadal struggled to hit the ball through the court. Nadal said last week he did not believe clay-court tennis should happen at night. Too cold and too damp, which makes the clay stick to balls, giving them the feel of heavy rocks on his racket.Nadal won the initial scheduling battle Sunday, playing his match on the Philippe Chatrier Court. Organizers put Djokovic on the second court, Suzanne Lenglen, a smaller and more open venue with just one level of seats, making it susceptible to high winds.Djokovic managed the challenge, making Schwartzman seem like a sparring partner who forced Djokovic to run and stay on the court long enough — a little more than two hours — but not too long. After one spirited sprint to the net for a perfectly feathered drop-shot return, he put his finger to his ear, asking the crowd to give him his due.Nadal had no such concerns, though he struggled from the start of the chilly and breezy evening. Forty minutes into the match, he was down 5-1 and two breaks of serve, the rarest of events for someone who came into the match with a 108-3 record in this tournament.Nadal often kicks clean the nub of tape in the middle of the baseline before heading to his chair for a changeover. As Auger-Aliassime, pumped his fist after clinching the first set, 6-3, Nadal spent an extra few seconds working the line with his foot, taking an extra moment seemingly to prepare for the challenging places this match was going.Nadal appeared to take control of the match in winning the second and third sets but, unlike Djokovic, Nadal has been anything but clinical at Roland Garros this year, losing opportunities to close out opponents like the assassin he has been in years past.It happened again on Sunday. In the end, at the crucial moments of the last two games in the final set, it took a magical, on-the-run forehand flick for a down-the-line passing shot, an all-out sprint to catch up to a drop volley, a perfect second serve on the T, two more all-out chases and two deep, signature forehands for Nadal to set up his showdown with Djokovic.Just as everyone was hoping. More

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      Leylah Fernandez and Coco Gauff Advance at the French Open

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      She outlasted Amanda Anisimova, a hard-hitting American, showing the kind of big-stage composure that got her to the final of last year’s U.S. Open.PARIS — It is a new season and a different surface, but Leylah Fernandez, still tenacious and still a teenager, is back in the deep end of another Grand Slam tournament.She needed all of her resourcefulness and upbeat energy on this unseasonably chilly Sunday afternoon at Roland Garros.Amanda Anisimova, a 20-year-old American seeded 27th, is one of the biggest pure hitters in women’s tennis, capable of generating phenomenal pace with a seemingly casual swipe of the racket.She has a new model this season, which has helped her control her easy power. The 17th-seeded Fernandez spent nearly two hours digging in the corners and lunging for returns, but in the end, the counterpuncher beat the puncher 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 as Fernandez’s quickness, consistency and yes-I-can positivity made the small difference as she advanced to her first French Open quarterfinal.“She’s very offensive,” Fernandez said. “I just tried to be as offensive as her and just take my chances, and the balls went in today.”That is no coincidence at this stage. Fernandez, a 19-year-old Canadian, looks like a big-stage player and was part of perhaps the biggest surprise in tennis history when she and another unseeded teenager, Emma Raducanu, advanced to the U.S. Open final last year with Raducanu, a qualifier, winning in straight sets.The rest of the women’s field has certainly taken notice.“I’m thinking, especially if the U.S. Open taught us anything, that anybody can win on any day,” said Coco Gauff, an 18-year-old American who is seeded 18th at Roland Garros.Gauff played one of the better matches on Sunday, defeating No. 31 seed Elise Mertens 6-4, 6-0 to return to the French Open quarterfinals, where she lost last year to the eventual champion Barbora Krejcikova in an error-strewn match that Gauff ranks as one of the biggest disappointments of her short career because of the way she managed the most significant points.“I think that was the biggest lesson I learned last year in my quarterfinal,” Gauff said. “I had a couple of set points, and I think I freaked out when some of those points didn’t go my way. Today I didn’t freak out.”Instead, she gathered strength and showed increased patience on the clay, often engaging in long rallies with Mertens before going for winners (or hitting a lunging backhand around the net post).Her work on herself and with her new coach, Diego Moyano, seems to be paying dividends, and Gauff will next face one of Moyano’s former pupils, Sloane Stephens, in an all-American, intergenerational duel.Stephens, 29, is unseeded this year but has long thrived on clay and was a French Open finalist in 2018. On Sunday, she overwhelmed Jil Teichmann 6-2, 6-0. Stephens defeated Gauff 6-4, 6-2 in the second round of last year’s U.S. Open when they played for the first time on tour. But that was hardly the first meeting. Both are based in South Florida, and Stephens attended Gauff’s 10th birthday party and practiced with Gauff for the first time when Gauff was 12 and already planning on facing Stephens on much bigger stages.“Today I didn’t freak out,” Coco Gauff said of her straight-sets win on Sunday.Yoan Valat/EPA, via Shutterstock“I had a very competitive mind-set since I was a little girl,” Gauff said. “Yes, I looked up to her and all that, but I knew that I was going to be playing against her.”For those who followed the dueling Cinderella stories, Fernandez and Raducanu will be forever linked, but though both were seeded here in Paris, they have not been on parallel paths since New York.Neither has come close to taking the regular tour by storm. That has been reserved for a player who is only slightly older: the new No. 1 Iga Swiatek, who at age 20 has won 31 straight matches and remains a prohibitive favorite at Roland Garros, where she was a surprise teenage champion herself in 2020.But while Raducanu has signed a series of major endorsement deals and shuffled coaches, she has yet to get past the quarterfinals of a regular tour event since the U.S. Open. Fernandez has often lost early as well but she did defend her singles title in Monterrey, Mexico, in March and is now making her best run in Paris with a fine chance to go further considering that she will face the unseeded Italian Martina Trevisan in a rare quarterfinal between left-handers at Roland Garros.Sloane Stephens will face Gauff, her fellow American, in the quarterfinals.Christophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFernandez said she put too much pressure on herself to succeed after the U.S. Open final.“I just wanted to be more offensive, more aggressive and improve my game as fast as possible,” she said. “I think I just understood that there is a process, and it’s still a long year, a very long year, and I just need to calm myself down, calm my mind down. And just accept that things are going to be tough, things are going to go sideways in a match, in a practice. And just understand that I’ve got more tools in my toolbox that I can use and just find solutions.”That last sentence sounds like she has been studying the Rafael Nadal phrase book, and there is indeed a touch of Nadal in Fernandez on court. She, too, is a speedy lefty with unorthodox technique. Nadal has his bolo-whip finish on the forehand; Fernandez has extreme grips of her own and often hits her two-handed backhand with her hands far apart.There are the intangibles, too: the in-the-moment combativeness; the resolute walk between points and the ingrained rituals. Anisimova might want to jot down a few notes considering her lingering tendency to get negative. She often grimaced at her errors on Sunday, mocking her own shots and flinging her racket across the red clay in frustration late in the final set to the sound of a few scattered boos from stands that were never more than half full on the main Chatrier Court.Fernandez seemed like a more composed and focused presence. Even if her game was a flickering flame, her commitment was not.“Every time I step out on the court I still have something to prove,” she said. “I still have that mind-set I’m the underdog. I’m still young. I still have a lot to show to the people, to the public so that they can just enjoy the tennis match.” More

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      Medvedev Seizes Chance to Make an Impression on French Open Fans

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      Daniil Medvedev and other Russians, barred from competing at Wimbledon because of the war in Ukraine, have made a run in the French Open. The ban remains a sensitive issue in tennis.PARIS — Banned from Wimbledon, the Russians seem intent on making the most of the Grand Slam tournament at hand.One by one, they took to the red clay at the French Open on Saturday, and one by one, they emerged victorious.Daria Kasatkina and Veronika Kudermetova advanced to the fourth round in women’s singles. Andrey Rublev and Daniil Medvedev did the same in men’s singles, joining their compatriot Karen Khachanov, who was already set to face Carlos Alcaraz, the Spanish teen sensation, on Sunday.Medvedev remains the most intriguing Russian at Roland Garros on multiple levels. As the No. 2 seed, he is on relatively dry land for the moment: on the opposite half of the draw from Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Alcaraz.He was once seemingly allergic to clay, at least the French Open, losing in the first round in his first four appearances. He still has a losing record on the surface, but he made a French Open quarterfinal run last year, and after hernia surgery in March that caused him to miss most of the clay-court season, he arrived in Paris seemingly fresh in body and mind. On court, he has rumbled past three solid players in straight sets, including the No. 28 seed Miomir Kecmanovic on Saturday: 6-2, 6-4, 6-2.Medvedev did not lose his serve and seemed to be one step or slide ahead of Kecmanovic from start to finish, absorbing pace, producing power and precision on demand, and using his big wingspan at 6-foot-6 to close down the openings.“Today was truly magnificent,” Medvedev said in the sunshine as he gave his post-match interview on Suzanne Lenglen Court. “It was all working for me. There are days like that, and I hope more like that will be possible in the days ahead.”Medvedev was conducting the interview in fluent French. He has been based on the French Riviera since his teens, and with his droll sense of humor and language skills he is able to connect with the Parisian public on a level that is unusual for a foreign tennis player (as long as he continues to avoid berating chair umpires or breaking rackets in a fit of pique).The global repercussions of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have included a sensitive dilemma for tennis, prompted by Wimbledon’s decision to bar Russian and Belarusian players from the tournament next month. The men’s and women’s tours responded by stripping Wimbledon of its ranking points, saying the move was needed to protect its systems that in part determine tournament qualifications.It is, as Djokovic described it, “a lose-lose” situation: full of hard choices and restless nights for those making the calls.But Medvedev, caught in the maelstrom, hardly seemed a pariah on Saturday as he cracked jokes with the interviewer Marion Bartoli, a former French star and Wimbledon champion.“He speaks French as well as we do, like someone born in France even if he was born in Moscow,” she said. “He understands what is going on, understands his environment, and it’s clear that it pleases the public here a great deal that he communicates in their language.”Some of that is due to communicating for years in French with his longtime French coach, Gilles Cervara.“Gilles is sometimes trying to use words on purpose that I don’t know, that I should know, that are uncommon,” Medvedev said. “It’s the same thing with tennis, where you’re trying to do things that are out of the ordinary to shake things up and do something extra. You have to always improve.”I asked Medvedev later what it would take for him to be considered “a dirtballer.”His reaction: “What is ‘dirtballer’?”Apprised that it meant clay-courter, he smiled and said: “I’ll have to do better than last year in Roland Garros. That’s for sure.”Like many a Muscovite, including Rublev, Medvedev grew up playing much of the year in fast indoor conditions.“It was not even hardcourts — it was more like indoor ice,” Rublev said with a laugh on Saturday. “You touch the ball and the ball is like a rocket. You hit one ball and the ball is going so fast, even when you are 6 years old. In Moscow, there is actually plenty of clay, but the problem is there’s not much summer, only two or three months, so you don’t get much time to play on it.”Rublev, the No. 7 seed and long based in Spain, has had more consistent results on clay at the pro level and was a quarterfinalist at the French Open in 2020 and a finalist at the Monte Carlo Open last year. His forehand, hit with heavy topspin and major racket-head speed, fits the traditional vision of a clay-courter much more than Medvedev’s with his comparatively flat strokes.But it is very tempting to agree with Rublev that Medvedev’s biggest obstacle on clay is between the ears.“He didn’t beat Djokovic in Monte Carlo for nothing,” Rublev said in an interview, recalling a 2019 upset. “So, I think it’s more about him, that he put this in his head, than it is about the clay. And we can all see now that he has won all the matches here quite easy, beating good players.”Still, the path does not get smoother. Medvedev is in a more welcoming neighborhood than the top half of the draw, but it is still a rough neighborhood with Rublev, Jannik Sinner, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Hubert Hurkacz and Casper Ruud all on the prowl.Next up for Medvedev: the No. 20 seed Marin Cilic, who overwhelmed a weary Gilles Simon, 6-0, 6-3, 6-2, on Saturday in the 37-year-old Simon’s final French Open match (he will retire at year’s end). Simon, one of the cleanest hitters and deeper thinkers on tour, gave an excellent summary of why it will soon be time to bid adieu.“It’s a lot of work and a lot of suffering,” Simon said. “I am at three anti-inflammatories and six paracetamols before the match. The only thing left to try is morphine. I know where I’m at. I’ll give it my all until the end of the year.”Medvedev sounded world-weary himself after losing the Australian Open final to Nadal in January with the crowd against him. He looked tired and irritable in March as he lost early in Indian Wells to Gael Monfils and in the quarterfinals in Miami to Hurkacz before undergoing surgery.Even his successes have been tempered of late. When he rose to No. 1 for the first time on Feb. 28, his breakthrough came as Russia invaded Ukraine, rightly darkening the mood. He stayed on top for only three weeks before Djokovic reclaimed the spot. But the tours’ decision to strip the points from Wimbledon, where Djokovic won the title last year, means that Medvedev is in prime position to return to No. 1 in the coming weeks.Barring a highly unlikely compromise, he will be watching Wimbledon from afar, but for now at least, he is in the Grand Slam arena, in no mood to talk politics but increasingly eager to speak in French and about clay.“I hope the better I speak French, the better I will play,” he said on court, the Roland Garros crowd already “dans la poche” (in the pocket), even if the champions trophy is not. More

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      Coco Gauff Loves Clay. Really.

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      Americans and the red clay of Roland Garros have not always gotten along so well. Coco Gauff and a few others are starting to change that.As French Open riddles go, Coco Gauff makes for a pretty good one.On the surface, she has no business steamrolling opponents on the red clay of Roland Garros, especially women from Europe who grew up on the stuff. But steamroll she has, cruising into the final 16 without dropping a set.Gauff is playing in the half of the draw that does not include Iga Swiatek of Poland, the world No. 1 who has not lost since mid-February and plays every match like her court-time will expire after an hour. That means Gauff is positioned as well as anyone to stay alive deep into the second week, which has some people who have been around the sport for a very long time scratching their heads.After Gauff beat Kaia Kanepi of Estonia on Friday afternoon, 6-3, 6-4, in a brisk 83 minutes, Fabrice Santoro, the retired French player who does the on-court interviews, was less than subtle.You’re an American, and yet you love clay, Santoro said. How is this possible?Indeed Gauff has grown up mostly in Florida, which has produced its share of tennis champions, but Americans have a reputation for being allergic to clay, growing up in a country where hardcourts are ubiquitous and French Open champions not named Williams are rare.Mary Carillo, who won the mixed-doubles title here in 1977 with John McEnroe, said McEnroe told her he still found it difficult to return to the venue where he blew a two-set lead in the 1984 men’s singles final. An American man has not won the singles title since Andre Agassi in 1999. Serena Williams won it three times, most recently in 2015, and her 23 Grand Slam victories have come much more often on the other surfaces. Sofia Kenin was a finalist in 2020, and Amanda Anisimova was a semifinalist in 2019.Gauff’s game, when she is avoiding her ugly streaks of double faults, is built around her powerful serve. When the ball makes contact with clay, it slows and pops in the air more than it does on any other surface, which should render her most potent weapon less so. Also, her strokes can be erratic, a dangerous trait on a surface on which the ability to grind through long rallies is essential.And yet, Gauff talks like a dirt baller who grew up in Spain, where clay-court tennis is simply known as tennis.“I love clay,” she said earlier this week. “I have good results on clay all the time.”Gauff won the girls’ title here in 2018 and made the quarterfinals in the main draw last year. She could have a good bit of American company in the fourth round, where she will face Elise Mertens of Belgium. Anisimova advanced Friday after Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic twisted an ankle badly during the second set of what had been a tense battle. Muchova had to default early in the third. Sloane Stephens, the 2017 U.S. Open champion and a finalist at the 2018 French Open, advanced with a win over Diane Parry of France. Jessica Pegula, Madison Keys and Shelby Rogers play their third-round matches Saturday.At just 18, Gauff is the youngest of the lot. She also has been the most intentional about making herself as good on clay as she is on any other surface, from her first years of pursuing tennis seriously. She began traveling to the south of France to train at the Mouratoglou Academy when she was 10.Also, look a little deeper and the clay may give Gauff as many advantages as it takes away. At 5-foot-9, Gauff is around the average height among top players these days, but she has long legs. That can help her cover a lot of ground with just a few quick steps, but it can make balls that stay low on grass and hardcourts a tad more difficult for her.If there has been a common thread in Gauff’s first three matches, it’s how well positioned she has so often been. The balls hit the clay and bounce right into her strike zone, giving her a series of belt-high fastballs that she can tee off on, while taking advantage of the extra split second the clay gives her to set her feet or slide into position.Always aggressive and hunting for forehands, she will inevitably make her share of errors, but so far she has hit more winners than unforced errors, which is always a good sign for any player. She has also rarely appeared off balance.“I really enjoy sliding,” she said. “I think it helps me recover faster after I get to the ball. Then also, I mean, I play pretty heavy on my forehand, so I think that clay bounces the ball up even higher.”For her part, Anisimova, 20, also spent most of her childhood in Florida, but she said she grew more comfortable on the clay largely by playing a lot of junior tournaments in Latin American countries, where red clay is also far more common than it is in the United States.Anisimova is a dangerous returner, able to punish the slower serves, especially with her near-lethal backhand. She also knows her footwork and movement may be the weakest part of her still-developing game, and the longer points on clay inevitably require her to cover more ground. The clay makes her weakness a little less weak. “It gives me more time,” she said of the clay after her win over Muchova. “Hard courts sometimes can be a bit too quick.”One more win each for Gauff and Stephens, and they would face each other in a quarterfinal between two Americans.Stephens faces Jil Teichmann of Switzerland and knows she has her work cut out for her for a simple reason.“She likes clay,” Stephens said. More

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      Chinese Tennis Star, Zheng Qinwen, Emerges During French Open

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      Zheng Qinwen, 19, has emerged during this French Open, amid the backdrop of a long standoff between China and the women’s tour over Peng Shuai.PARIS — To keep things simpler for her Mandarin-challenged Western friends, the rising Chinese tennis star Zheng Qinwen often goes by the nickname Ana.But if you watch the teenage Zheng hit a forehand, a serve or just about any shot on a tennis court, her first English-language nickname seems more appropriate.“At the real beginning at IMG, they called me Fire,” she said in an interview at the French Open on Friday, referring to her management company, IMG.There is indeed plenty of power and passion in Zheng’s game, as she demonstrated in her second-round upset of Simona Halep. Ranked No. 74 and climbing, Zheng, a 19-year-old French Open rookie with a lively personality, is one of the most promising young players in the world as she prepares to face Alizé Cornet of France on Saturday on the main Philippe Chatrier Court.But Zheng’s run comes at a particularly uncertain time for an emerging Chinese tennis star. She is one of the leaders of the so-called Li Na generation: the group of young Chinese players who gravitated to the game after the success of Li, China’s first Grand Slam singles champion and long one of the highest-earning female athletes. “Li Na makes me think big,” said Zheng, just 8 years old when Li won the French Open in 2011.Li, who retired in September 2014 at age 32, was one of the catalysts for the WTA Tour’s decision to increase its presence in China, packing its late-season calendar with tournaments in the country including the WTA Finals, the tour’s year-end championships, which moved to Shenzhen, China, in 2019 for 10 years and offered a record $14 million in prize money, including a winner’s check of over $4 million.But despite the long-term deal, there has yet to be another WTA Finals in China and no tour event of any kind since global sporting events were disrupted in early 2020 near the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Though the tour resumed in other parts of the world later that year, China kept its borders shut to most international visitors and international sports events.In December, the WTA Tour suspended all tournaments in China because of allegations made by Peng Shuai, a prominent Chinese player. In an online post, Peng accused Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier of China, of sexual assault. The post was quickly taken down and online conversation about Peng in China was censored.The WTA requested guarantees of her safety, a direct line of communication with her and, most improbably in light of the Chinese context, a full and transparent investigation into the allegations. Peng has since reappeared in public in China and suggested that her online post had been misinterpreted and that she had not made sexual assault allegations. She also has announced her retirement at age 36. But though the issue has largely faded from the headlines, the WTA Tour has not lifted the suspension or backed away from its demands for an investigation. It is still unable to communicate with her directly and concerned that she has been coerced into a retraction.The WTA already has announced that it will not return to China this season, and it is possible even without the WTA suspension that the Chinese government would not have allowed tournaments to go ahead in 2022 considering that numerous major cities, including Shanghai, have been locked down in recent weeks because of new restrictions amid a surge in coronavirus cases.For now — and perhaps quite a bit longer — Zheng and her compatriots are without a Chinese showcase for their talents even though the men’s tour has not suspended its events in China.“Of course, I wish I can play at home,” Zheng said. “I know it is China decision, and I cannot do anything. Let’s see.”The three-year absence of tour-level events in China also means that Zheng and the other Chinese women’s players must remain abroad even more than usual.“I’m sad because if they make a lot of tournaments in China then I have a chance to come back,” she said. Zheng, now based in Barcelona, Spain, and coached by Pere Riba, a former top-100 men’s player, has spent much of her short life away from home. Originally from the central Chinese city of Shiyan, Zheng was encouraged by her parents to choose a sport.“My parents asked me to choose between basketball, badminton and tennis, and I found out my favorite sport is tennis,” said Zheng, who also spent two years playing table tennis before losing interest. “I felt like there was more space to compete. Tennis is a game of choice. It’s not who’s stronger or who’s more powerful or who’s faster. Every decision you make on court can change the match.”She was an only child but said she moved to Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province and about 250 miles from Shiyan, when she was just 8. She said she spent four years there.“That was a difficult time for me because I was not with my parents at that moment,” she said. “They came to visit me like once a week or two weeks one time.”She said it was her father’s decision for her to join the tennis program in Wuhan so young. “He saw that I was good at tennis, and he wanted to see if I could do something,” she said.The talent scouts soon agreed. IMG signed her to a contract at age 11, not long after her father convinced her mother to make the long journey to the United States with Zheng in November 2013 to take part in the Nick Bollettieri Discovery Open, an event at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., that was open to young players without an invitation.“My mother didn’t want to go,” Zheng said. “But my father said now she is the best in China at her age so now you have to see where she is in the world.”Her first impression?“The first thought I had in the head was, ‘Wow, the sky is so blue,’” she said. “Because China, you know, had a little bit of pollution at that time.”Once on the court, she brought the thunder. “I happened to be there,” said Marijn Bal, who became one of Zheng’s agent at IMG. “And the coaches were watching all the matches, and they were like, ‘You have to come. There’s this Chinese girl who is amazing.’”Upon returning to China, she eventually relocated to Beijing to train at an academy run by Carlos Rodriguez, the Argentine-Belgian coach who worked with Li at the end of her career and had spent more than a decade coaching Justine Henin, a former No. 1 player.Zheng said she spent 90 minutes a day working with Rodriguez for several years on technique, tactics and her mentality. “I think Carlos made the base for what I am right now,” Zheng said.What she is now, with her power game modeled initially after Serena Williams and Kim Clijsters, is a threat to the establishment. That includes Cornet, a 32-year-old French star in perhaps her final season who will have no shortage of crowd support on Saturday as Zheng makes her debut on center court.“I’m ready for that,” Zheng said calmly. “I like to play on the big stages.”Until further notice, however, the big stages in women’s tennis are all outside of China. More

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      The Budding 19-Year-Old Star at the French Open Not Named Carlos Alcaraz

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      Holger Rune of Denmark is making his mark in Paris. His childhood rival is hogging the spotlight. That is just fine with him — for now.PARIS — With all due respect and attention to Carlos Alcaraz, a favorite to win the 2022 French Open, there is another heralded 19-year-old still alive in the men’s singles draw, a guy from Denmark named Holger Rune.The similarities largely end there for two players who may very well end up being rivals for the next decade, which is about how long they have been rivals already. For the moment, though, and maybe just for another few days, they inhabit separate worlds.“It’s pretty fun when you see these players here that you have been playing at junior tournaments for years,” Rune said in an interview Thursday after a second consecutive straight-set win launched him into the third round of a Grand Slam tournament for the first time.Alcaraz, a Spaniard ranked No. 6, has sucked up much of the oxygen on the days he has played, even though he shares the stage with some pretty good players named Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Alcaraz’s five-set comeback from match point down on Wednesday against Albert Ramos Viñolas was the match of the tournament so far.Rune, ranked No. 40, has floated under the radar. He has yet to drop a set.Alcaraz plays in the big stadiums and is the talk of the locker room.“The famous Carlos Alcaraz,” is how the Russian Daniil Medvedev, the 2021 U.S. Open champion who is seeded second, recently described him with a smirk.Rune has so far played on Court 12, within Roland Garros’ low-rent district, where the backcourt is so tight he tripped over the folded tarp that protects the clay from the rain while chasing a backhand Thursday and badly twisted an ankle. He was just three games from winning. For a moment, he thought this was very bad. He limped to his chair and received medical attention, then came back and closed out Henri Laaksonen of Switzerland, 6-2,6-3, 6-3.Alcaraz has dark hair and dark eyes and for the last year has appeared to model his look and his quietly confident but humble demeanor after the Big Three: Nadal, Djokovic and Roger Federer. His coach, and the model for all he does, is the soft-spoken former world No. 1 Juan Carlos Ferrero. Alcaraz’s father has described his son as the ultimate workhorse, even when he was a small boy.Rune, a Nordic dirty blond, plays in a backward baseball cap. His coach, the little-known Lars Christensen, began instructing him when Rune was 6 years old after he appeared at the local club in Denmark that Christensen ran.It works, but it has not always been smooth.Rune has yet to lose a set at this year’s French Open.Yoan Valat/EPA, via Shutterstock“I was lazy when I was a kid. I mean like 12 or 13,” he said Thursday after he withdrew from the doubles tournament to protect his ankle.Alcaraz hits the ball so hard even the world’s best players say it can take a set to adjust to his pace. He does not lack for touch, but at his core he leans on a testosterone-fueled brand of the game.Rune plays a style filled with finesse. He drifts across the court and never seems to expend more energy than what’s necessary.He and Alcaraz began playing each years ago in the under-12 competitions. They have played 10 times, he thinks. He’s pretty sure Alcaraz has the edge, 6-4, over the years. Alcaraz beat him in straight sets in November at the Next Gen ATP Finals in Italy.Both had coming-out parties of sorts at the U.S. Open last year. Alcaraz, then known mostly to tennis geeks, upset the third-seeded Stefanos Tsitsipas in a five-set epic in the third round.Rune drew Djokovic in the first round.“My goal is not just to play here. My goal is to win this tournament,” Rune declared before that match. He lost the first set, 6-1, but won the second in a tiebreaker before his legs gave out and he lost 12 of the next 15 games.“I was a little inexperienced,” he said Thursday. “Didn’t know what it takes to play five sets, possibly in every match.”He still does not lack in self-regard. “I believe in my game,” he said, though he has now added a dose of realism. “I believe I can beat anybody, but I also believe I can lose to anybody.”True enough, but it’s also worth noting that for years every tennis pundit — Patrick McEnroe, Brad Gilbert and on and on — was fairly certain that the days of discussing teenage contenders at major tournaments had passed. The game had become too physical, they said. It was the domain of men.Alcaraz has dispelled that notion, winning big tournaments near Miami and in Madrid this spring and beating Nadal, Djokovic and the Olympic gold medalist Alexander Zverev along the way.Rune may not be far behind. A French Open junior champion in 2019, he won his first ATP Tour title in Munich earlier this month, knocking off Zverev along the way.He won a BMW for the effort, but there is one problem, which serves as a reminder of his youth: He has yet to take the test for his driver’s license.“Didn’t have the time,” he said. “When we have some time off, we are definitely going to do the driver’s license and take the car.”Alcaraz got his license in February. More

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      Two Outsiders Get Career Boosts at the French Open

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      Léolia Jeanjean and Fernanda Contreras Gomez arrived at Roland Garros relatively late in the game. But their experience helped justify what it took to get here.PARIS — The French Open, as one of the four Grand Slam tournaments, is the big time for a tennis player: large and loud crowds, major prize money and most expenses paid, including hotel accommodations, laundry and meals on-site.Welcome to the big time, Léolia Jeanjean and Fernanda Contreras Gomez.It is the first Grand Slam tournament for both, and they have arrived relatively late in the game. Jeanjean, a wild card from France ranked No. 227 in the world, is 26 years old. Contreras Gomez, a qualifier from Austin, Texas, who represents Mexico, is 24 and ranked No. 225.They are outsiders. Their biography pages on the WTA website do not yet include their photos or even their birth dates. But they are the latest reminders of how much talent and persistence exist beyond the elite in the global game of tennis. And while only Jeanjean was still in the tournament on Thursday night after her second-round upset of Karolina Pliskova, the No. 8 seed, Contreras Gomez was hardly short on memories or gratitude after her straight-set defeat to Daria Kasatkina, the No. 20 seed.Until qualifying for Roland Garros, Contreras Gomez had never faced a top 100 player in singles, but she won four matches in Paris: three in qualifying and one in the first round, reading through her tactical notes on changeovers and scribbling new ideas in her notebook as well. Writing comes naturally. She wrote a novel entitled “Rise of the Darkness,” completed this year though still unpublished.“I have had this sense of wonderment here,” Contreras Gomez said in an interview in a French Open players’ lounge on Thursday. “Every time I was on court and things got stressful or things got complicated, it was like, I’m in Paris; I’m in Roland Garros. What’s there to complain about? This is amazing.”She, like Jeanjean, played college tennis, an increasingly common path to the tour and even to the top. See Cameron Norrie, a former Texas Christian University star, who reached No. 10 in the ATP rankings this season, and Danielle Collins, a two-time N.C.A.A. singles champion at the University of Virginia, who is No. 9 in the WTA rankings after reaching the Australian Open final this year.Contreras Gomez is from a tennis family. Her father, Javier, is a teaching professional and her grandfather Francisco Contreras played in the Grand Slam tournaments and was a player and captain on Mexico’s Davis Cup team. She was born in Mexico before her family immigrated to the United States in her early teens, and was a fine enough student to be accepted at Yale in the Ivy League. But she chose to attend Vanderbilt University on a full scholarship because she felt it was her “nesting ground” and that she would be happy there. No other top-flight Division I tennis program recruited her.“When I signed her, people thought I was insane,” said Geoff Macdonald, her coach at Vanderbilt. “She has a one-handed backhand and weighed like 82 pounds. Her dad is slight. Her mom is slight. She is a little person, but I just liked her spirit and who she is, and after the first fall tournament I knew that this kid is absolutely magic.”She played in a range of slots on the Vanderbilt team and reached the semifinals of the N.C.A.A. singles tournament. Macdonald remembers her telling him after her sophomore year that she needed to conquer her fears on court to play better tennis. She then headed to Cape Town, South Africa, for a study-abroad program.“I get a video that says, ‘Hey coach,’ and she’s jumping out of an airplane skydiving,” Macdonald said. “In the next one, she’s bungee jumping over the Zambezi River.”After graduating in 2019 with a degree in mechanical engineering, she followed her dream of playing on tour but started to have understandable doubts during the coronavirus pandemic hiatus in 2020, which she spent with her parents in Austin.“It was highly tempting during Covid,” she said. “I knew as an engineer, you could make a comfortable salary, and I was like, ‘Wow I’m a struggling tennis player, I’m barely making ends meet, I could be like my friends, who have an engineering job and have a nice apartment and can go out with friends.’ But I realized that it wasn’t the money that was driving me. It was the passion for it and the desire to live, like fully live, and feel all the emotions: the sadness, the loss, the ecstasy of reaching a dream.”She met a South African former men’s pro, Christo van Rensburg, in 2020 as he was coaching players in Austin. He saw potential and encouraged her and provided some coaching and even some financing. The former Spanish star Emilio Sanchez Vicario also has been a mentor of late and Eric Ferguson has helped with physiotherapy, but Contreras Gomez broke two small bones in her right wrist when she slipped on a clay court last year. “The money situation really got in my head, and it got in my head so much that I said, ‘I have to speak to my therapist, and we’ll figure out how not to focus on this,’” she said.Fernanda Contreras Gomez after qualifying for the main draw last week.Robert Prange/Getty ImagesShe was on the edge again financially just a few months ago. She was trying to lift her ranking high enough to get into the French Open qualifying tournament and decided the best path was to fly to Australia to compete in small-money events.“I had to fund it on my own and because I did well I was able to pay for it, but I remember coming to Europe, I was on the last bit of my savings,” she said, anticipating that even if she only played in the qualifiers at Roland Garros, it could bring in a little bit more money.Jeanjean has faced many obstacles — financial and otherwise — of her own. Until her early teens, she was considered one of the most promising junior players in Europe and was provided with the services of a full-time personal coach by the French Tennis Federation at age 12.She dominated competition in her age group, drawing some comparisons to Martina Hingis, the Swiss prodigy who played tennis like it was chess, adjusting her tactics depending on her opponents and rarely trying to overpower a point when finesse was still an option.But a major knee injury stopped Jeanjean’s progress, and she ultimately chose to study in the United States, playing Division I tennis at Baylor and Arkansas before finishing her eligibility at the Division II Lynn University, a small private university in Boca Raton, Fla., where she was an outstanding player and received her master’s of business administration in 2019.But it is quite a leap from Division II excellence to Roland Garros, which she had not even visited for 10 years.“What surprises me is to see that my game troubles these players so much,” she said on Thursday after bamboozling Pliskova, a former No. 1 still working her way back from injury, with her rhythm shifts to win, 6-2, 6-2. “I thought I’d be overpowered and see winners flying by me everywhere, but that’s not the case.”Jeanjean said that for “four or five years” she never thought she would play in a Grand Slam tournament, but fueled by the desire to honor the potential she demonstrated in her youth, she decided to give herself “a second chance.” She was ranked in the 1,000s at the beginning of 2021, and without sponsors she relied on government subsistence funds and some help from her father, according to L’Equipe, the French sports publication.Now, after working her way through the minor leagues and earning less than $20,000 in career prize money, she is in the big time with a chance to get bigger, considering that she faces Irina-Camelia Begu, an unseeded Romanian, in the third round on Saturday.Contreras Gomez will head to Britain for the grass-court season with her notebook and second-round prize money of about $90,000 (minus French taxes). She still has no clothing sponsor, but her plucky performance in Paris has attracted a two-year financial commitment from Martin Schneider, an American businessman and benefactor who has supported Collins and other college players to try to make the transition to the professional tour.“Without resources, this is a brutal sport,” Schneider said.Contreras Gomez, with her engineering degree, at least has an excellent Plan B. But Plan A is going rather well for the moment.“Both my brains are fighting each other,” she said. “The creative side is let’s stay on Cloud Nine. The engineer side is like, OK, next tournament; it’s grass season.” More