Tuesday at the French Open wasn’t good for much, but it did produce two of the best I-can’t-take-it-anymore quotes of the tournament so far.
“I’m just pissed,” Agnieszka Radwanska said after losing her fourth-round match, 2-6, 6-3, 6-3, to Tsvetana Pironkova after being up a set and a break on Court Suzanne Lenglen. “I cannot play in those conditions.”
Over on Court 1, Aga’s fellow high seed Simona Halep was having a similarly exasperated reaction.
“I have no words,” Halep said after squandering her own lead, and losing her own fourth-round match, 7-6, 6-3, to Sam Stosur. “It’s impossible to play, in my opinion.”
The problem for Radwanska and Halep was the same one that has been driving everyone involved in tennis—from beleaguered officials tearing out their hair, to exasperated players roaming the player lounge, to sad fans left staring at Roland Garros’s red tarps—up a wall: rain. From the start of the tournament, there have been rumors of foul forecasts to come, but I don’t think anyone thought it would be this bad. On Monday, an entire day of play was cancelled, and it wasn’t much better on Tuesday. Unfortunately for Radwanska and Halep, while Roland Garros obviously wanted to move the schedule along, theirs were the only singles matches completed.
But one woman’s loss is another’s gain, and not surprisingly, Stosur and Pironkova had a different opinion of the conditions.
“It was raining for the first part when we went out today,” Stosur said, “but the court was OK for the most part.”
“We have all played in all sorts of conditions,” Pironkova said. “Usually if the court is not fit for play, like if it’s slippery, they would cancel the match right away. But today the court was still hanging in, it was OK, we could have played, and so we did...It wasn’t perfect, but that’s the way it is.”