Coming Down the Backstretch

The top men and women will tell you that the atmosphere changes when a Grand Slam reaches the quarterfinals. Fewer matches, fewer players, and fewer courts in use means everything—every point, game, and racquet smash—is magnified. The best only shine brighter under this spotlight.

The quarterfinals of the 2015 French Open will begin on Tuesday. Here’s a look at how things stand, and what may be in store, as the second tournament in Paris begins.

How many times can a player's narrative change as she progresses through a Grand Slam draw? When Serena Williams came back to beat Victoria Azarenka in the third round, we heard a lot about how, “you have to beat her in the first week of a major, or you're not going to beat her.” Now that she was in the second week, I wondered, was she going to shift into a higher gear and barrel away from the field?

Not quite. For the third straight match, Serena started sluggishly in her fourth-rounder against Sloane Stephens. She made 15 unforced errors in losing a 23-minute first set 6-1. And she was three points from defeat at 4-5, 0-15 in the second set, before a couple of good first serves helped keep her in the match.

By the time Serena had won, 1-6, 7-5, 6-3, the “queen of the second week” thesis was out, and a new one had taken hold: She’s doing what Maria Sharapova did in her title run here in 2014. Last year, Sharapova went three sets in each of her final four matches; in three of those, she dropped the opening set. This year, Serena has already lost the first set and come back to win three times. Is this yet another way of one-upping Maria? Of course, by the time she’s through with her next match, against Sara Errani, a whole new Serena narrative may present itself.

For now, though, she’s winning with persistence. Sharapova refused to lose last year; Serena is doing the same this year. Sometimes that’s what, as Rafael Nadal has shown on the men’s side, clay-court tennis is all about.

As Serena herself said today: “It’s not about how you start. It’s about how you finish.”

So the quarterfinal to end all quarterfinals is a reality: Nadal will play Novak Djokovic in the late-afternoon on Wednesday in Chatrier. I admit that I find myself sort of wishing that, instead of Andy Murray and David Ferrer, a French player was involved in the other men's quarterfinal that will be played on Wednesday. Would Roland Garros officials have had the gall, so to speak, to schedule Nadal-Djokovic in Lenglen? If so, Twitter might have spontaneously melted down.

At the start of the tournament, Djokovic was well ahead of Nadal in their speculative race to the title. And the No. 1 seed has been virtually perfect so far in Paris. He hasn’t dropped a set, and he saved his most convincing match for his 6-1, 6-2, 6-3 win over Richard Gasquet in the fourth round. I thought Djokovic began the tournament too sky-high to get any better as it went, but he may have pulled it off.

Yet Nadal, despite blowing two chances to serve out his fourth-round match against Jack Sock on Monday, has closed the gap. He has used the last week to iron out the forehand problems that were plaguing him and settle onto the clay where he plays his best. I think Djokovic is still the favorite, but I would no longer be surprised by a Nadal win. In his press conference today, I thought Rafa set up the dynamics of this quarterfinal well.

“He’s by far the best player in the world,” Nadal said of Djokovic. “He’s brimming with confidence; he has exceptional form. He’s won almost all the matches since the start of the year. He has only two defeats. I love Roland Garros. I love the tournament. I love the courts. I will pull out all the stops to win the match. I feel competitive. I will fight to the bitter end. I don’t know if it will be enough. I don’t read a crystal ball. So if I play well, and if my opponent plays better than me, I will shake hands and congratulate and then I will move on.”

Djokovic is the best right now; we haven’t forgotten that. Rafa loves these courts better than any others; we’ve been reminded of that. This will be fun. We knew that.

Remember Black Wednesday at Wimbledon in 2013, when everybody lost? We haven’t had a single-day massacre like that at Roland Garros this year, but the women’s draw has gradually grown more haywire with each passing round. Monday added a good deal to the mayhem, when the No. 2 and No. 4 seeds, Maria Sharapova and Petra Kvitova, were both knocked off, and the top seed, Serena Williams, was three points from joining them on the exit ramp out of Paris.

The fact that Serena, who plays Sara Errani next, is still alive gives this draw some sense of order, and an overwhelming favorite. Otherwise, it’s open season. The other three quarterfinals go like this: No. 23 seed Timea Bacsinszky vs. 93rd-ranked Alison van Uytvanck; No. 7 seed Ana Ivanovic vs. No. 19 seed Elina Svitolina; and No. 21 seed Garbine Muguruza vs. No. 13 seed Lucie Safarova.

At first glance, Ivanovic, the 2008 champion here, makes sense. But after her poor 2015, and with her coaching situation up in the air, she seemed to be the least likely woman to fulfill her seeding.

This draw is a product of two recent trends. Over the last few years, the WTA field has deepened, and the women have usually provided the drama and the headlines over the first week at majors. In 2015 specifically, there’s also been more vulnerability among the Top 10: Eugenie Bouchard, Agnieszka Radwanska, and Ivanovic in particular have slumped. This has left an opening for a quality second-tier player like Safarova; a late-bloomer like Bacsinszky; and recent risers like Muguruza and Svitolina. I’m not sure what to tell you about Van Uytvanck; maybe the women’s game has found its Martin Verkerk, the surprise 2003 French Open finalist from the Netherlands.

Ivanovic, Svitolina, Muguruza, or Safarova: One of them will be a finalist. Either Bacsinszky or Van Uytvanck will be a semifinalist. It’s exciting and surreal, and, as 2013 Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli can tell you, it raises the stakes in every match.

Serena Williams, to the surprise of no one, is the last U.S. player left in Paris. Two others, Jack Sock and Sloane Stephens, bid the tournament adieu on Monday. But these were not losses that should make American fans ask, yet again, what’s wrong with tennis in this country. Stephens and Sock are both 22, and both played the most mature tennis of their careers at this event.

Sock beat three highly-touted young players, Grigor Dimitrov, Pablo Carreño Busta, and Borna Coric. He did it by imposing his bruising style, and showed that he can win, essentially, with his forehand alone. More important, Sock carried himself differently at this tournament. In the past, he seemed to be looking for a fight, and he let those fights distract him and cost him matches. Here he seemed confident that if he plays his game, he can stay with anyone, and that no one can match his forehand.

The same went for Stephens. From her first match, a win over Venus, to her last, a loss to Serena, she appeared less worried about results and more concerned with simply playing as well as she could and seeing where that took her. Sloane said that she’s working on trying to focus on herself on court, and while that’s a cliché that every player spouts, I felt like it helped her this week.

Sloane’s only problem came at the very end. With Serena serving at 4-3 in the third set, Sloane had a chance to step in and crack a few forehands—the momentum in the rallies was with her. On other days, she might have hung back, but today she didn’t. She moved in, took a full cut...and sent three forehands over the baseline. Aggressive tennis doesn’t come naturally to her, but she fought her instincts and tried it anyway. If it had worked, and she had won, Sloane would have a good chance to win the French Open. She shouldn't need any more motivation than that.

Let the second tournament begin.