Thursday Theatrics

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“I know my level is literally a hundred times better than I played today.”

Springtime in Paris? Serena Williams might be wondering, as she stares up at the gunmetal-gray sky above her, if the concept is just a little overrated. The top seed is struggling to find anything to be happy about in a muted Court Suzanne Lenglen. When the sun finally does pop out from behind the clouds, it does it at exactly the wrong moment for her. As a lob by her opponent, Anna-Lena Friedsam, goes up, Serena is blinded by a momentary ray of sunlight. Instead of putting away a smash, she loses the point, and eventually the first set.

Serena misses lines by inches and drills easy balls into the tape. She double faults eight times and commits 52 unforced errors. She goes for too much on her forehand, and too little on swing volleys that she would normally pulverize. She plays a winning point, fires herself up with a fist-pump, and then ... makes another error. Just when you think she’s going to turn it around at the end of the first set, she double faults again and is broken.

What is it about Serena and second-round matches on Suzanne Lenglen? This is the same court and the same round where she was stunned by Garbiñe Muguruza in 2014. Is Friedsam, ranked No. 105, with just one Grand Slam win to her name, going to do the same to her in 2015?

This is a new year, though, and while we like to say that “if you’re going to beat Serena at a major, you better do it early,” she hasn’t lost any early ones of late. She came into this match having won 15 straight Grand Slam matches. Make that 16 straight. Slowly and never surely, Serena cuts out the double faults, begins to time her returns, and finds something approaching her range on her ground strokes. But she never settles down entirely. Up 2-0 in the third, she hits her best, most relaxed, most Serena-like backhand of the day. It looks as if she’s going to sprint to the finish line from there ... until she drives her next forehand into the middle of the net.

Has Serena survived her scare for the fortnight? Was this the test she needed before her third-rounder against Victoria Azarenka? Serena, it seems, is waiting to find out.

“I’m probably more frustrated than relieved,” she said after her 5-7, 6-3, 6-3 win, “but I know I’m capable of playing great tennis—just haven’t seen it yet. ... As long as you survive the next day, you can always improve.”

Serena began the clay season with a similarly erratic win over Sara Errani in Fed Cup. She called that a “wake-up call,” and said that she was behind in her preparation on dirt. She didn’t catch up in Madrid, where she lost in the semifinals, or Rome, where she pulled out with a elbow problem. We’ll see if Vika gives her another chance on Saturday.

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“I was going mental.”

Thanasi Kokkinakis watches the break points come and go; each one, he says, is like “being shot with an arrow.” The 18-year-old Australian, with the elaborate name and the haircut to match, has lost twice to his countryman and friend Bernard Tomic this season. When the elder Aussie goes up two sets and Kokkinakis can't find a way to break him, it looks like it’s going to happen again.

But “looks like” is never the right phrase to use when Kokkinakis is behind in a tennis match. We’ve seen other young ATP players make their marks in distinctive ways over the past year—Nick Kyrgios with his serve and his strut, Borna Coric with his guts and his grit. But Kokkinakis’ winning trait may be the most important and promising of all of them: He’s good at comebacks. Earlier this season, in a crucial Davis Cup match for Australia, he fought back from two sets down to beat Lukas Rosol. Today he went one better against his Davis Cup teammate. Twice Kokkinakis snatched victory from the jaws of defeat: Down two sets to love, he won the next two sets to level the score; then, down 2-5 and a match point in the fifth, he won five of the next six games for the victory, 3-6, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, 8-6.

We’ve heard a lot about how Kyrgios is the game’s next star, but Kokkinakis, who has played the role of little brother among the young Aussies so far, may have the wider appeal among tennis lovers. He’s high-spirited—as anyone could tell from his, um, enthusiastic celebration today—but he's grounded as well. Today he leaped, he tumbled, and he bruised his hip, à la Gael Monfils, but he won anyway.

Kokkinakis’ name may not sound like Rod Laver’s or Roy Emerson’s or Tony Roche’s or John Newcombe’s. His Western-grip forehand doesn’t look like theirs. And they certainly never contemplated combing their hair the way he does. But more than his youthful peers, the Greek kid from Adelaide carries on the old-Aussie tradition of proud but level-headed competitiveness. Today Kokkinakis absorbed all of the arrows on those blown break points—he would win just five of 22—and found a way to remain standing. Afterward, he talked about how he’s going to handle his next match, which will be against Novak Djokovic on Saturday.

“I’m not gonna change my game plan,” Kokkinakis said. “I’ll do what I do best and hopefully it works.”

If he does lose to the world No. 1, as is more than likely, it won’t be because of his attitude.

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“Grazie, grazie.”

Francesca Schiavone lifts her hands over her head and claps. She's thanking the audience for helping her find a way, against every odd imaginable, to win what many are calling the match of the tournament so far, a 6-7 (11), 7-5, 10-8 victory over Svetlana Kuznetsova. If ever there's a battle fit for the Bullring at Roland Garros, it's this knock-down, drag-out second-rounder between two former French Open champions, which lasts for three hours and 51 minutes. That's just an hour less than their last epic, a fourth-rounder at the 2011 Australian Open that Schiavone also won, 16-14 in the decider.

It's a reeling-in-the-years moment for the Italian today at Roland Garros, the site, five years ago, of her greatest triumph. At 34, she’s deep into the late stages of her career. She’s ranked No. 92, and of the 12 tournaments she’s played this year, she’s lost in the first round of eight of them. But today Schiavone, who has always competed with flair, pulls out every trick in her veteran’s bag. She chops, she loops, she sprints forward to volley and scrambles in retreat. With a “Hi-yee!” and a “Hi-yah!”, she lets us know how much she's putting into every swing. She comes back from a break down in each of the last two sets, saves a match point, and somehow she breaks Kuznetsova four times when she serves for the match. "The Lioness," she's called in Italy, and today the name is appropriate—the Lioness in Winter has growled again.

“I think it is still inside me something,” a tearful Schiavone says afterward. “You are reaching the mountain, but you go back and you are again down. Then you fight, you go up, it’s tough. You are there and go again [down]... So you keep going for one meter more. You need just one meter more. When you do the step, here you feel [the heart] yourself happy and proud.”

Grazie, Frankie. Who needs a sportswriter when an athlete can describe a tennis match like that?