French Open Women's Final Preview: Ostapenko, Halep eyeing first major

After defeating Timea Bacsinszky in the semifinals, 20-year-old Jelena Ostapenko stopped by the Tennis Channel set at Roland Garros to discuss her remarkable run in Paris and her upcoming title match against Simona Halep.

“She’s young,” was the first thing that Halep said when asked about the prospect of facing Ostapenko for the first time in the French Open final. It’s a deceptively straightforward description. As a 20-year-old in the middle of her breakthrough Grand Slam run, Ostapenko, as Halep knows, will be a dangerously unpredictable opponent. So far in Paris, she has played with the blind confidence of youth; in her last three matches, the free-swinging Latvian has run away with the third set against Sam Stosur, Caroline Wozniacki and Timea Bacsinszky, three veterans who had much more experience late in majors. But as Halep also knows, Slam finals bring their own, special, stomach-churning type of pressure. Will Ostapenko be able to ignore her surroundings one more time?

The question will be slightly different for Halep: Will the Romanian be able to ignore her own tendencies one more time? For an emotionally volatile player who can get negative quickly, she has played a remarkably panic-free two weeks of tennis. On Thursday, she took No. 2 seed Karolina Pliskova’s best punches and kept bobbing and weaving and jabbing until she had won in three sets. In the previous match, Halep had essentially thrown in the towel against Elina Svitolina when she was down a set and 1-5; she was so resigned to her fate that she says she didn’t even realize she had saved a match point in the second-set tiebreaker.

Will that back-from-the-dead miracle make Halep feel bulletproof in the final? Her experience against Pliskova might help more. In that match, Halep ran everything down and tried to hit high and heavy and as deep as possible. Those are the tactics she’ll need to employ against Ostapenko as well. It’s a cliché, but making the 20-year-old “hit one more ball” than she has in her previous matches here might be enough to break the spell, and the blind confidence, of youth.

Winner: Halep