PARIS—“How long are we gonna keep playing?” Denis Shapovalov shouted toward the chair umpire as he raised his hands in frustration.
What was the source of the teenager’s angst? If you believed Shapovalov’s words, it was the rain that was beginning to drench the clay inside Court Suzanne Lenglen on Tuesday morning. If you looked at the scoreboard, though, you might have guessed a different reason: he had just been broken by John Millman, and trailed 4-1 in the first set.
Whatever the reason for his complaints, by the time Shapovalov had sat down for the changeover, they had taken on a philosophical air.
“Why are we out here?” Shapovalov moaned to no one in particular.
Were we about to see the downside of Shapovalov’s youth? Was this very French Open moment—rain falling hard, but not hard enough to move tournament officials to act—going to prove to be too much for the Roland Garros rookie? While Shapovalov has had a surrisingly successful clay season, he’s hardly a natural on the surface.
“I mean, last year I didn’t win one single match on clay,” he said a few weeks ago in Madrid. “So going into this year, I didn’t have any expectations or confidence at all.”