Roland Garros II

It’s the beginning of the end! Just to start this newsletter dramatically as usual. It’s Monday and Monday means only one more week before the sun sets on the second Grand Slam tournament of the year.

I thought I could analyse the entirety of the remaining draw but when I sat down to write I realised that it was the simple idea of a madwoman. I would still be writing 5 days later while the tournament moved on with no regard to the slow (me) leaving the weak (also me) behind as it once did when I still played myself. So instead, I picked four players who I saw a significant amount of growth with over the course of the last few weeks and days. If this newsletter was a novel or a movie, I would call it character arc. When in fact, they are real people. Even more impressive. Art imitates life, life imitates art.

Iga Swiatek – How to Leave Stubbornness Behind

Yesterday’s win against Elena Rybakina was one of the most impressive wins of Iga’s I can think of in recent times. There are multiple factors that play a role. This is the first real “crisis” we have seen with Iga since she became number one by default (Ashleigh Barty retired suddenly and only aged 25). I put “crisis” in quotes because making the quarterfinals of almost all WTA 1000 tournaments this year would be a great start to the season for most players. But Iga is not most players. She has different standards for herself and that’s why we have different standards for her too. It’s not always fair, but the path of the excellent few rarely is.

She got smoked by Elena’s powerful game for a set and a bit. Yet, she remained calm, she didn’t panic, she didn’t anxiety-unforced-error the match away as she has been doing in the last few months. AND, maybe most importantly, SHE FINALLY TOOK A STEP BACK ON RETURN. If you’ve ever heard me commentate on one of Iga’s matches, you will have heard my confusion about Iga’s stubborn return stance close to the baseline against the biggest servers on the tour. You will have heard me attribute some of her losses to that choice. Yesterday, she took a step back. Just in time to turn the match around. In the third set at 3:3, Iga hit three stunning returns to break Elena and eventually win the match.

the joy

For the longest time, Iga had always had the best return numbers of the WTA, on both first and second serve returns. Lately, that hasn’t been the case anymore. Her high stance, close to the baseline, takes time away from her opponents who have barely landed before the ball is back on their side. But it relies on Iga seeing the ball earlier and better and bigger than anyone else. The biggest optical illusion in tennis is confidence. From basketball to needle in a hay, a tennis ball has many sizes. When confidence is low, the ball shrinks. Take a step back, give yourself time and time will reward you.

One of the hardest things to do when striving for excellence is to continue to work and evolve when the results on court are not rewarding you. As Ana Ivanovic always said: It’s part of the process. Going out on the practice court at 8am is easy when you’ve won a bunch of titles, and you see it’s paying dividends. It’s much harder to do when tennis has been as emotionally withholding as the one cool boyfriend with the leather jacket reading paper backs you’ve once had. Iga is always putting in the work and a match like yesterday’s win against an outstanding player like Elena can turn a whole season around.

Novak Djokovic – What to Do with Love?

There is a club a lot more exclusive than Club 55, Augusta or Wimbledon. One you can’t pay to become a member of; you can’t even marry a royal. I mean, you could but it wouldn’t make you a member. Only 3 men are part of it: Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Jimmy Connors. It’s the Club 100 reserved for men who have won 100 titles or more. I honestly don’t think I have PLAYED 100 tournaments, let alone won 100 tournaments but apples and oranges. Contrary to the other players on this list, Novak’s character change was not so much done internally but it is something that has happened externally. He is, after all, the oldest on this list and half the transformation battles lie behind him and one major one (retirement) ahead of him.

Since Roger and Rafa have retired Novak has lost the appeal of a villain. He has become the elder statesman, the man who won the gold medal at the Olympic Games and broke down crying from this immense accomplishment. He is now beloved and respected everywhere he goes. The problem for Novak is, well, he kinda needs the friction. He plays his best when the pressure is the highest and a sprinkle of rage seems to propel him to greater heights. What to do with no audience members left to fight with?

Enter Dušan Vemić. Novak’s new coach has coached incredibly talented players before him, some would say geniuses, yes, you guessed it correctly: Me.

To be fair, Dušan is the least hateable person on the planet, but he’s known Novak for decades AND he understands the rage mentality. One where sometimes you need to yell at your team that they’re not telling you anything even though they haven’t stopped coaching you for the last 20 minutes. It’s not about truth; it’s about expiating demons. Am I speaking from experience? Of course not. I’m speaking from the depths of my soul - LOL.

the genius

Some players thrive in equilibrium, others in friction. There is no right or wrong, it’s just individual temperament. Novak wouldn’t be Novak, if he hadn’t been the latter. That’s the mental side.

The other side is that Dušan is incredibly meticulous, some (me) would say fussy, when it comes to technique. The angles on take-back, where the racquet points when you move your arm, when and how to turn, not a single thing escapes this man’s eye. It’s not been talked about enough how clean Novak’s groundstrokes are. That’s the reason why he never misses. There is no area in his swings where technique could break down. Lately however, the backhand looked a bit dodgy at times in the early stages of clay court tennis. It hasn’t so far in Paris. It’s not all Dušan - hey, Novak is there too - but he sure doesn’t hurt.

I always say, the real work of a coach is seen after a few months. The beginning stages of a partnership are all vibes. Consequently, it shouldn’t be ignored that some of Novak’s current good tennis is also Andy Murray’s work. Combine it all and pair it with Novak’s experience of winning titles (um, 100) and it will bring forth yet another Grand Slam tournament where it wouldn’t surprise me if Novak surprised me. May his body hold up!

Coco Gauff – the Weakness has Become a Strength

To me, Coco Gauff is the most underrated player on tour. I know, it’s a crazy thing to say about a young woman ranked number 2 in the world and a Major champion at 19 but whenever I speak to people outside of the inner circles of tennis they seem not to understand why. They seem not to grasp HOW good Coco Gauff really is. I wanted to highlight a few aspects of her game that are not as obvious as her athleticism.

One is her movement from North to South. Everyone knows that Coco Gauff runs a lot of balls down but sitting court side for many of her matches, the more impressive movement of hers is the one moving into the court on short balls and out of the court on long ones. Watching Coco Gauff play from the sideline is like watching the tides of the sea, so organic, so natural, like it was always meant to be this way. Which leads me to the next point. The reason she moves like this is her impeccable eye for the game. Running up a few feet to a short ball is easy, anybody can do it, recognising that the ball will land short in the first place is the difficult part. Coco does.

the eye

And then, of course, the forehand. The most discussed groundstroke in tennis. Well, funny thing is: The forehand on clay is actually pretty damn good. It’s heavy and creates angles, it’s safer than on quicker surfaces and I saw with my own eyes how Marie Bouzkova tried to stay away from it in the crucial moments of their match. It’s a tricky thing, this, when you walk on court with a clear strategy in mind, this is the weaker shot, this is where I will go when things matter most and all of a sudden, you realise that, whoopsie, that’s not it at all. If you notice it at all. We are sometimes so focused on a certain strategy that we forget to change it when things start to go wrong.

Coco has a slightly higher winning percentage on clay compared to other surfaces (73% on clay to 68% on other surfaces). The forehand is a big reason why. As others before her, players with a more extreme grip will have an easier time to get under the ball on the higher bouncing clay courts. Think Iga Swiatek, think Alexander Zverev and in its most extraordinary incarnation: Alberto Berasategui. It’s not only what happens on these players’ side but also what happens on the other. The extreme grip will produce more topspin, and the grainy particles of clay will only enhance the rotation created in its initial moment of time.

My favourite thing about Coco Gauff, however, is the innate competitor that girl carries within her. Do you know how it feels to serve 15 double faults per match? After the fifth, most of us would want to just crawl under an awning and die in peace. But Coco just trucks on and often prevails. Anyone who’s ever had problems on their serve will know that serving issues are a virus that infect your entire game. Sometimes Coco succumbs to it. Like in Madrid when she served for the second set in the final against Aryna Sabalenka but double faulted the game away. And sometimes she beats one of the best clay court players in the world in Zheng Qinwen in 3 hours and 30 minutes in Rome and with having hit 15 double faults. But what happeneded in Madrid happpenened and what happpeneded in Rome happppenend and here we are. We are in Paris.

Lorenzo Musetti – Beauty Will Save the World

The first time I saw Lorenzo Musetti play tennis was at the Foro Italico and he was 16 years old. He had this beautiful one-handed backhand and moved around the court with grace lending his game an irresistible charm. And he was also 16 years old. Meaning, there was a lot of whining and self-pitying and the chair umpire was against him as were the bad bounces on the clay court and the wind seemed to always blow in his face and strangely the court was built uphill only for him. We’ve all been there. Being a teenager is hard. He’s not much older now, 23, but he has a child now, another is on its way and in the meantime, he has accumulated more maturity at 23 than I will ever have.

His growth this year has been the most prominent of all players to me. He showed glimpses during grass court season last year but seems to have really solidified whatever development he has gone through in the past few months.

the beauty

The sudden toughness, the not letting-up no matter what – it’s all very impressive. He could’ve been okay with being a beautiful Bernese Mountain Dog that shows up once a season to save tennis with its beauty and from the avalanches of this world, but he decided that he’d rather be a Jack Russel Terrier who bites your calf and doesn’t let up however hard you shake him.

Apart from mentality, he’s added another thing: Physicality. The boy who once lost a fifth set to 15 year his senior Novak Djokovic 6:0 at the French Open now looks like a man who can continue running when the others have already given up on the race. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and this Italian speciman hasn’t been either. Months of hard work lurk in those lungs and thighs and if there’s one thing you need at Roland Garros, it’s lungs and thighs.

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I’m sorry that this got way out of hand when it comes to length but I had so much fun writing about these players. By picking them, I’m not necessarily saying that they are the favourites to win the title. One of them might, but it might just as well be Aryna or Carlos, Jannik or Qinwen. It was a toss-up for me between Carlos and Lorenzo today because I have seen a tremendous amount of growth in Carlos too. The reason I picked Lorenzo today is that I do think Carlos is the most likely to triumph at the end. Which would give me another opportunity to write about him in length. May the games continue!

the writer pretend

Things that make me happy

One of the best matches I have seen so far at Roland Garros (apart from everything Gael Monfils did) was the encounter between Jasmine Paolini and Elina Svitolina. The rallies, the fighting spirit, the strategy - it was all right there! Unfortunately missed by many because and this leads me to…

Things that make me unhappy

Much has been written about not enough women’s matches being scheduled at night. The real scandal, in my opinion, is that 97% of matches played at 11am on Philippe Chatrier are women’s matches! That to me is a much bigger scandal than not having them play at night. If Justin Bieber himself showed up for an 11am Philippe Chatrier gig, chances are the stadium would be half empty. Not to mention that it’s the middle of the night in the US when the US have the most female players in the TOP 10 right now. Ben Rothenberg over at Bounces has done a terrific job in highlighting this fact (please subscribe to Ben if you want actual journalism and not whatever I’m doing over here).

Let’s go on a thought experiment here for a second. If I took gender out of the equation and said to a non-tennis-fans: There are people who play best-of-5 and other people who play best-of-3, the likelihood they would agree that the night session with one match should be filled up by people who play best-of-5 is high. If, however, you asked the same non-tennis-fan why in their opinion people who are playing best-of-3 are always scheduled at 11am, they couldn’t possibly think of an explanation. Because there is none.

I personally don’t believe that longer is always better. I’m 100% convinced that you could have cut one third of Oppenheimer and it still would’ve been very good. But I do see the point made, especially when you pay a lot of money.

I also think the ideal format at the Grand Slams for both women and men would be for ALL of them to play best-of-3 in the first week and for ALL of them to play best-of-5 in the second. If it’s just to settle the constant discussions of equal pay for good. It’s all just a girl’s fantasy. I do stand by my point, though, that the real issue here is the scheduling of the first not the last match.

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Thank you all for sitting through this long, long post. On a Monday of all days! How dreadful. See you all in a week after the second Grand Slam tournament of the year has concluded and we are all a little fatter from the butter on all things French.

Yours truly, Andrea