Yulia Putintseva's height is listed as 5’4”, but anyone watching her take a seat on changeovers on Thursday might have suspected that that was a little generous. Putintseva was probably the only player at this year’s French Open whose sneaker heels couldn’t touch the clay when she sat in her sideline chair.
But for the better part of two hours, to the delight of the famously hard-to-please Parisian crowd, Putintseva stood as tall as any woman at this year’s French Open. The pint-sized Russian-turned-Kazakh ran, slid, grunted, screamed, fist-pumped, fist-pumped and fist-pumped some more. When she won the first set, Putintseva lifted her arms in the air in an attempt to raise the (non-existent) roof in Court Philippe Chatrier. Then she looked up at her player's box and smiled at her own theatrics, as if to say, “Wow, look what got into me!”