Mihaela Buzarnescu delivers Elina Svitolina her latest Grand Slam exit

PARIS—“Why,” a fan who had stumbled into the Bullring on Friday might have asked, “is Elina Svitolina seeded No. 4 and Mihaela Buzarnescu seeded 31st?”

All the visible evidence would have pointed this fan toward the opposite conclusion. It was the rail-thin Buzarnescu who was hitting the ball harder, flatter, deeper. It was Buzarnescu who was playing with a whirling abandon, whipping her left-handed forehand with enough sidespin to send Svitolina far off the court in one direction, and then pounding her flat two-handed backhand into the open court in the other direction. Through the course of her 6-3, 7-5 win, Buzarnescu gained leads and gave them back, broke serve and was broken back, but she never stopped forcing the action and forcing her way forward. She finished with 31 winners.

What was Svitolina doing while Buzarnescu was hitting those winners? She was trapped where you don’t want to be trapped in that intimate, circular arena: Running between one line judge and another at the back of the court, trying desperately to return Buzarnescu’s shots anyway she could—slice, hack, block, lob. Worse, though, was what Svitolina did when she finally did have a chance to move forward and take a crack at a ball. As often as not, it seemed, she drove it into the net. She finished with just 11 winners against 29 errors.

So ends Svitolina’s latest, and seemingly best, chance at Grand Slam success. Along with Alexander Zverev on the men’s side, Svitolina has been the game’s poster child for major-event disappointment. Each has won half a dozen titles over the last year and a half and rocketed into the Top 5, but neither has been past the quarterfinals at a Slam. On a day when Zverev had to save a match point to survive a five-set scare from Damir Dzumhur, Svitolina was unable to escape her fate against Buzarnescu.

Match point from Buzarnescu's win over Svitolina in Roland Garros:

To her credit, though, she didn’t run from her disappointment or shrug it off as just another loss, or just another lesson to be learned.

“Today, you know, really I was off and couldn’t find my rhythm, my game today, and was really struggling,” Svitolina said. “In the other hand, she was playing great tennis. She was really, really on the ball today...I couldn’t do enough to get the win today. It wasn’t enough.”

“I couldn’t find my rhythm today, and I couldn’t fight,” she continued. “You know it’s really, really bad for me that I couldn’t really go through the tough moments with a good attitude today. I wish I could do something different today, but yeah, it’s done.”

Reporters tried various ways to give Svitolina an excuse or make her feel better: Was it hard playing a lefty? Was it hard playing someone you had never seen before? Was it hard to play your first match Sunday and then have two days off? Was it hard to switch to the Bullring after two matches in Lenglen?

Again, to her credit, Svitolina didn’t take the bait on any of these “issues.” She answered them all with a variation of, “It’s tough, but we have to deal with these kinds of things.”

The story of this match is the story of virtually every women’s major event: The player who took the intiative, who took control, who took the rallies into her own hands, who created openings on the most important points, ended up the winner. When every player is geared up and in the best shape they can be in, the way they are at the Slams, it’s the aggressor who has the advantage, even on clay. Just ask recent French Open champions Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, Garbiñe Muguruza and Jelena Ostapenko. Svitolina can be the aggessor—she attacked brilliantly in the Rome final against Simona Halep two weeks ago—but she was beaten to the punch today.

Buzarnescu, who beat her to that punch time and again, is a story in the making. The Romanian is 30 years old, and she was ranked outside the Top 350 a year ago. Knee injuries forced her off the tour for years, long enough that she went back to school in Bucharest and received a Ph.D in sports science. But last year the knee pain vanished, and she qualified for her first major at the US Open. Now, in her main draw at Roland Garros, she’s into the fourth round, where she’ll play Madison Keys.

If Buzarnescu keeps whipping and whirling her way forward on the court, she might just keep moving forward in the draw, too.

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