The Women
Amelie Mauresmo
The pressure builds. Not only is Mauresmo the hometown favorite this time around, she’s the top seed and world No. 1 as well. Maybe her new status as a Grand Slam champion will help her relax, maybe not—it will be the question of the tournament. There’s no one too scary in her quarter, but there are a few accomplished players lurking nearby: Nicole Vaidisova, Jelena Jankovic, Patty Schnyder, and Venus Williams have the shotmaking skills to stay with the more finesse-oriented Mauresmo—and make her nervous again.
Kim Clijsters
The No. 2 seed and two-time finalist was her usual streaky self in her first match, nearly losing a set to the less-than-heralded Virginie Razzano. (Is it just me, or is Clijsters looking a little bored with tennis these days? She never seems to be too happy out there.) While clay is no longer her favorite surface, Clijsters won in Warsaw on dirt this spring and will always have as much speed, power, and athleticism as any other woman. Her section of the draw is a vast wasteland until the quarters, where she could meet the winner of Elena Dementieva and Martina Hingis. The key for Clijsters will be to survive the off-form match that will inevitably come in the second week.
Justine Henin-Hardenne
The defending champion may be only the No. 5 seed, but she has to be the favorite until she’s dethroned. When she’s healthy, Henin-Hardenne is still the best in the game on clay. She’s got as much explosiveness as Clijsters, and she’s better at focusing it than her countrywoman. And like Clijsters, the draw is kind to H-H until the quarters, where the potential match of the tournament awaits against No. 3 seed Nadia Petrova. Still, the Belgian’s health remains a mystery and an X-factor, and probably always will.
Nadia Petrova
As I said, fans await a quarterfinal between Petrova and Henin-Hardenne. Which shows just how far the Russian has come in the last few months. She’s won four tournaments this year and is on a 15-match winning streak. Her victory over Henin-Hardenne in Berlin a few weeks ago was probably the most impressive of her career. She showed more speed and hitting skills than I thought she owned. Even better, she was the one toughing out the important points. The only question is how she’ll handle the attention and pressure of being an unexpected favorite after spending years just outside the limelight. Another knock: Despite her Berlin performance, and the fact that her mom was a track star, Petrova is still not the mover that Clijsters, Henin-Hardenne, and Mauresmo are.
Martina Hingis
The wild card among the women is Hingis. She’s made steady progress up the rankings and won in Rome last week, but she didn't beat any of the top players along the way. And Venus Williams, no dirtball expert, has beaten her on clay this year. But if Hingis is going to win a major with her steady, smart, medium-pace, low-risk game, it’s going to be the French. She knows how to move on clay, and a win would give her a career Grand Slam. I see her out-steadying Dementieva in the fourth round, but Clijsters’ pace will make her a tough matchup in the quarters.
The Winners
Men: Rafael Nadal
Women: Kim Clijsters
Enjoy the week from Paris. I’ll be heading there Saturday and, provided I can find a European plug adapter and remember how to ask for a metro pass, I'll start writing on Sunday. My friend, and everyone’s favorite pot-stirrer, Peter Bodo, will join me. We’ve got the second week covered!
Paris is a sort of familiar puzzle to a New Yorker; the opposite side of the same scuzzy-beautiful coin. It looks better during the day—a time when certain NYC neighborhoods can appear to be rotting—but somehow sleazier at night. And Parisian cabbies listen to Thelonious Monk on the job, just like in an old New York film noir. Still, the citizens here do seem to love their fast food like everybody else. No self-respecting American tourists would be caught dead in the McDonald’s on Blvd. St. Germain (as much as I, I mean they, might be dying to stuff a quarter-pounder in their faces), but it was jumping with French kids yesterday.
You want to read about tennis, I know, but permit me one Redneck in Paris story. (Tennis nuts: Skip the next two paragraphs if you want to get straight to the tournament.) The biggest problem for me in this city is remembering how to get on the metro. Not remembering, exactly, but executing. Yesterday, I asked the token clerk for a week’s pass. A towering, glowering young guy with frighteningly stylish hair, he told me that I couldn’t get one of those until Monday, but I could get a ticket for the day. I told him to give me “one of those.” “15 euros,” he said. I looked up at him again, thinking, ‘15 euros (the equivalent of about $15) for one subway ride? Is he just taking my money.’ He looked down at me, annoyed. A line of giggling, loudmouthed French teenagers was forming behind me. For some reason unknown even to myself, I could not let these junior-high students think I was an idiot American tourist holding up the line. So I made the smart move: I handed 15 euros over to the clerk. “Maybe it’s some kind of holiday,” I told myself, hopefully, as he handed me a few small coins of change.
I took the ticket, put it in the slot, and tried to push through the complicated/stupid half-turnstile, half-door that’s at every metro entrance. Rather than opening, it made a jarringly loud alarm-like noise and resisted my push. I tried it again; same ugly result. Those teenagers were all over me now, roaring through on both sides and grunting with disapproval. After five or six attempts, I stepped back. There were some Americans gathered nearby. Rather than ask their advice, I looked away, avoiding all eye contact. When I did, I saw that the clerk was watching me. He didn’t look happy. “You can’t use that today,” he said, loudly enough that other people in the station turned their heads to see what was going on. “It isn’t good until Monday.” He had sold me the weekly pass after all, for 15 euros, and I’d been trying to jam it through two days early. I walked gingerly back over and asked for a ticket for the day.
The ride I eventually took got me to Stade Roland Garros by mid-afternoon. For me, the first memorable moment at this tournament happens along the road outside the grounds. It’s a long walk beside a busy boulevard and includes a nice view of the Bois de Bologne—a terrific metropolitan scene, with Roland Garros security guys in sunglasses and sharp red blazers keeping everyone moving (don’t try asking them anything; I’ve never met one who spoke a lick of English). After a few minutes, I hear balls being hit for the first time and start to see fans crowded above the outer courts. I’ve been watching on TV; now I’m here, at the spot. It’s a little unreal, and a thrill.
I reached the press benches above center court yesterday as Rafael Nadal and Paul-Henri Mathieu were warming up. This would turn out to be a clay-court war par excellence. It was also a war of attrition—I looked up in the middle of the third set and the clock said they’d been at it for three and a half hours. Mathieu played so much brilliant tennis, it seems incredible that he could lose. He ran right up on Nadal’s topspin forehand, taking it on the rise off both sides and drilling winners into the corners. It took every last bit of fight for Nadal to overcome him. The turning point came when he was down a set, 0-1 in the second, and serving at 0-15. He looked like he realized that this was it, so he turned on the willpower (yes, Nadal, unlike the rest of us, can turn that on and off). He hit a winning shot and let out a loud, “Come on!” (World citizen that he is, the Spaniard has started mixing “come on” in with his trademark “vamos”) From that point, he slowly, with many stops and starts, took control from a highly unwilling Mathieu. Nadal hit a few of the most ridiculous passing shots I’ve ever seen—and had a little trouble swallowing a banana—along the way. For his efforts, he now gets Lleyton Hewitt, a man he’s never beaten. He should get his first win Monday.
From there it was out to the Bullring, Court 1, a small, circular mini-arena that’s one of the three or four best places in the world to watch tennis. It was a last stand in Paris for the American men: James Blake vs. Gael Monfils. This was an interesting pairing not just because of their obvious athletic gifts, but for the mental match-up as well. More than many pros, these guys are prone to wild swings in confidence.
Blake was a late-bloomer who didn’t consider himself a sure-shot pro until he was in college. He also came from a family where it wasn’t always tennis-first: Who was the last pro to spend any time at Harvard? He’s never had an entitled attitude about the game, which is refreshing; but it also keeps him from having the blind belief in himself that characterizes so many successful athletes.
Monfils was not a late-bloomer—he almost won the junior Grand Slam a couple of years ago. But in his two years on tour, his confidence has soared and sagged weekly. Anyone who saw him go down pathetically in Las Vegas in March to Jonas Bjorkman, who hadn’t won a match in months, knows how bad Monfils can be. He’s had a generally awful 2006, but there were signs of life a few weeks ago in Rome, where he reached the semifinals. Like Blake until last year, Monfils has yet to show that he completely believes he belongs on the tour. It’s a marked contrast from the attitudes of guys like Andy Roddick and Lleyton Hewitt, who thought they belonged from Day 1, or even from Roger Federer and Pete Sampras, two other relatively late bloomers. Those two always had the belief (how could they not?), it was just a matter of finding the will and getting their games organized.
The positive signs Monfils showed in Rome continued through the first two sets against Blake. The Frenchman was in total control of the rallies—which was all the more amazing considering that he camps out a good six feet behind the baseline. Why shouldn’t he? He’s so fast, so long (that’s “tall” in NBA-speak), and so skilled at sliding forward that he covered every one of Blake’s drop shots easily. Monfils also served intelligently in the big moments—in other words, he didn’t go for a bomb every single time.
“Blake’s drop shots” is not something you normally hear, but he showed more racquet skills and variety yesterday than I’d ever seen from him. (Maybe practicing on clay really is good for your game.) He fought his way back into the second set and came out Sunday morning looking sharp. By which I mean “ready for a fight.” At one point, Monfils pointed to a mark on a close call. It showed that Blake’s ball was out, and the umpire agreed. The American thought it was the wrong mark (I think he was right). On the next point, Blake hit a screaming overhead in Monfils’ direction and let out a yell. Being the nice guy he is, though, Blake didn’t forget to say “Thank you” to the ball girl when she tossed him the next ball to serve. He’s the only pro I’ve ever heard do that, though he only does it with the girls, as far as I can tell. A ladies’ man all the way.
Every game had its share of colossal, “where did THAT come from?” shots. The two seesawed for five sets, Monfils lengthening the court with his long, smoothly arced ground missiles, Blake raising the field of play upward with spectacular overheads—the American even hit a jumping swinging volley. But Blake was up and down mentally. He got testy with the crowd during his low points, even challenging one audience member to come out on the court and show him a mark. The guy took him up on it and jumped out there (he would have been tackled by security and thrown into the East River if that had happened at the U.S. Open).
As for Monfils, his confidence never waned. He reminds me of Marat Safin in this regard—depending on the day, each man can have total, unshakable confidence, or none at all. With Safin, you can almost tell from the first point whether he’ll win or lose by his demeanor. The same may be true of Monfils.
For Blake, it ended in an unhappily predictable way. Rushed by Monfils’ speed, he stuck a sitter forehand volley, his weaker side at net, right into the tape and was broken for 5-4 in the fifth. The match ended a game later, with Monfils at mid-court, hands on hips, smiling and nodding his head: “Un huh, un huh, that's right, I am the winner," is what I imagine him saying (what is that in French, I wonder?). Maybe he believes.
Wow, it’s late, everyone’s left the pressroom but the cleaning crew (I’ve been shunted off to the Internet ghetto underneath Court Suzanne Lenglen, while Bodo’s living it up with free massages over at center court). I’ll be back tomorrow to talk about poor Amelie. Is this a chance for another Venus miracle? She’s got the serve-forehand combo working right now, and Nicole Vaidisova, a teenage opponent, up next. And, as Irina Spirlea once so poetically put it, she’s still “the f---ing Venus Williams.”