Day 3 French Open Blog: Halep's tactics, Osaka survives, Sascha's saga

On the final day of first-round play at Roland Garros, Steve Tignor meandered through the packed schedule and wrote about the matches and moments that caught his eye.

After last year’s French Open final, Simona Halep admitted that she had come out “too strong” against her opponent, Sloane Stephens. For the first set and a half, the Romanian’s aggressive ground strokes were met by the brick wall of the American’s defense. It was only when Halep dialed back the pace and played with make-every-ball consistency that she was able to mount a comeback and eventually win her first major title.

I thought about Halep’s self-assessment during her first-round match on Tuesday against Ajla Tomljanovic. Again, Halep came out firing. She moved forward in the court, she took full, confident cuts at the ball, and she closed out points on her terms against a taller and more powerful opponent. This time it worked, and she won the first set 6-2. Halep’s sharpness made for an obvious contrast with the woman who had preceded her on Court Philippe Chatrier, Naomi Osaka. Despite the fact that Halep was defending a Grand Slam title for the first time, she wasn’t suffering from any of the nerves or flatness that had plagued Osaka.

Yet Halep’s aggressive stance against left her in a quandary: The harder she hit, the harder the 5’11” Tomljanovic hit back. The Croat-turned-Aussie likes pace, and when she gets it, she can crack a two-handed backhand past anyone, even the speedy Simona. By the middle of the second set, Halep’s good play had inspired even better play from the other side of the net. Serving, returning, attacking, defending, Tomljanovic was in command throughout the second set.

What should Halep do? Against Stephens, she had, smartly, taken her foot off the gas. This time, though, she looked unfazed, and she continued to go toe to toe with Tomljanovic. Again, Halep chose wisely. Early in the third set, Tomljanovic fired a forehand into Halep’s backhand corner; it was the type of shot that would have won her the point in the second set. Now Halep was ready for it, and she fired back an even better backhand down the line for a stone-cold winner. She had raised her game to a place where Tomljanovic couldn’t follow. Halep would win the first five games of the set, and complete a 6-2, 3-6, 6-1 win.

What can Halep learn from today’s victory? What she already seems to know: that a different day requires a different tactic. Against Stephens, slowing things down worked; against Tomljanovic, staying the fast-paced course worked. That’s one reason Halep has reached two straight finals at Roland Garros, and why she’s a favorite to do it again.

“You wonder that she’s thinking underneath that towel,” the commentator in Court Philippe Chatrier said as he watched Naomi Osaka lean forward and cover her face in her towel during a changeover.

My guess was that Osaka thoughts went something like this: “My kingdom—and my ranking and my Grand Slam titles—for a crosscourt forehand.”

The No. 1 seed trailed 90th-ranked Anna-Karolina Schmiedlova 0-6, 4-5 in their first-round match, and much of the reason for this surprising scoreline could be chalked up to Osaka’s inability to hit that most fundamental of shots, the crosscourt forehand, over the net. Time and again, seemingly for no good reason, she had come over the ball too quickly and rolled it into the tape. Even as Osaka began to play better in the second set, that shot continued to drag her down. Serving at 4-4, she hit three crosscourt forehands into the net and was broken.

It would be a while before Osaka would find the range on that stroke, but somehow she survived just long enough without it. Twice Schmiedlova served for the match, at 5-4 and 6-5 in the second set. Four times she was within two points of pulling off one of the season’s biggest upsets. But the dagger blow was never going to come easily for the Slovakian. She hadn’t won a main-draw match at a major in four years, while Osaka came in having won 14 in a row at the Slams.

That history ended up making the difference. Schmiedlova kept the door open just long enough for Osaka to find enough of her game to walk through it. After committing virtually no errors for two sets, Schmiedlova suddenly—and predictably—lost control of her most solid shot, her backhand. At the same time, Osaka finally got her own best shot, her forehand, under some semblance of control. She won two crucial points with it in the second-set tiebreaker; by the third set, her arm was loose, her crosscourts weren’t landing in the net anymore, and she walked out of Chatrier with an 0-6, 7-6 (4), 6-1 win and a wide smile of relief.

Osaka’s role model has always been Serena Williams, and in many way this was a Serena-esque victory at a Slam: There was the sluggish start, the stares of disbelief at her player box, the stream of unforced errors, the hands thrown in the air in frustration; and then there was the last-second Houdini act to salvage the second set, and the easy cruise through the third. Serena’s reputation has always earned her a few key points when she’s needed them; today Osaka’s Slam-winning rep did the same for her.

Osaka, who won just 28 percent of her second-serve points, will have to play better, and soon: Victoria Azarenka, a straight-set winner over Jelena Ostapenko on Tuesday, is next. As of today, though, the dream of the Naomi Slam, and the calendar-year Slam, lives on.

“Sascha Zverev will be wondering how on earth he got himself into this situation,” said Richard Evans in the commentary box inside Court Philippe Chatrier on Tuesday.

Zverev said recently that he prefers to be called by his given name, Alexander, rather than his nickname, Sascha, but old habits die hard. That doesn’t just go for Zverev’s name, it goes for his game as well.

At the moment when Evans made the comment above, Zverev found himself in territory that, unfortunately, has become very familiar to him at the majors. He had won the first two sets from 56th-ranked John Millman, had been up a break in the fourth set, and had generally controlled the flow of play. But as he has so many times in the past, Zverev struggled to deliver a finishing blow, and now he found himself down 1-5 in the fourth-set tiebreaker. A deciding set, and another early exit at a Slam, were suddenly staring him in the face. There was little energy in a mostly deserted Court Philippe Chatrier; Zverev would have to find his way through this one on his own.

The 22-year-old may have wondered how on earth he had gotten into this situation, but it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been here before. Last year at Roland Garros, Zverev slogged through three five-set matches, before losing, badly, to his friend Dominic Thiem in the quarterfinals. At the time, it seemed like a baby step forward for the German, who had never gone that far at a major. This spring, though, he had taken a few more baby steps backward, losing early at clay-court events in Munich, Madrid and Rome that he had mostly dominated in 2018. With his ranking heading downward, Zverev entered the event in Geneva last week; after several long matches against lower-ranked players, he snuck through with a title.

After all of that, though, little seemed to have changed for Zverev in Paris. On Tuesday, he was still content to rally from deep in the court, despite the fact that the ultra-consistent Millman loves to do just that, and is very hard to beat in a war of attrition. Zverev still went for broke on his serve, despite the fact that clay doesn’t reward go-for-broke serving; he finished with 17 aces, but they were almost negated by his 14 double faults. Zverev still spent most of his time moving laterally along the baseline, rather than looking to move forward and improve his court position.

Watching Zverev slog on against Millman, I thought about another, younger player who had won his match on Chatrier on Sunday, Stefanos Tsitsipas. Where Zverev was solid and conservative, Tsitsipas was dynamic and creative. So far in 2019, the Greek’s game, which he modeled after Roger Federer’s, has looked like the future of the ATP. Zverev, by comparison, seems to be playing a style modeled on the Andy Murray-Novak Djokovic mode of baseline grind. It’s a game that relies on speed, defense, flexibility, and patience; can a player who is as tall as Zverev—he’s 6’6’”—ever move as well as the Brit and the Serb have? While he hit 57 winners against Millman, Zverev also made 73 errors.

Still, there’s a reason why Zverev is ranked No. 5 and Millman No. 56. In the end, the German won because the Australian began to miss with the match on the line. Serving at 3-4 in the fifth, Millman went up 40-0; from there, he couldn’t keep a ball in the court, as Zverev won nine straight points.

“Against a great opponent in tough conditions, to come through is all that matters,” Zverev said, truthfully.

When it was over, Zverev went out to the middle of the court, bent down, put his racquet on the clay, and thought a few deep thoughts, presumably about his game and his future. For now, he’s probably just happy to have one in Paris.

You remember Bianca Andreescu, right? The 18-year-old from Canada who beat five seeded players and two Top Tenners on her way to the Indian Wells title? Who inspired one national publication to say that she had “blown up tennis,” and another to compare her to mix of spins, speeds, and ideas to Clayton Kershaw’s? Who irritated Angie Kerber to no end? Who then, in true gunfighter style, disappeared without a trace for two months?

Yes, that Andreescu was back this week in Paris for the first time since March. After retiring from her round-of-16 match at the Miami Open, she had taken a five-week break due to a shoulder injury. Her return at Roland Garros was eventful, to say the least.

It took two days and three hours, but Andreescu won her opener over 118th-ranked Marie Bouzkova, 5-7, 6-4, 6-4, this morning on Court 14. The Canadian didn’t waste any time in littering up the stat sheet. She hit 58 winners and made 60 errors. She double faulted six times. She broke serve nine times, and was broken eight times. Most incredibly, and crucially, she won 25 of 28 points at net.

This Andreescu, not surprisingly, was a mix of her old brilliant self, and her current rusty self. She carved up perfect drop shots, and slammed home killer swing volleys, but she also struggled with her ball toss. She was aggressive, rather than tentative, in the pressure moments, but her vaunted shot selection abandoned her at times. Just because you own a down-the-line backhand doesn’t mean you should try it at 5-4 in the third set. Andreescu screamed at herself after misses, and also after winners. On changeovers, she sat with a towel over her head.

In short, Andreescu-Bouzkova was an entertainingly slapdash, it’s-all-happening kind of affair. And as she had so many times in Indian Wells, Andreescu found a way through it; she may have saved her most consistent tennis for the last two games. After eight weeks away, Andreescu should only get better. For now, what’s important is that she hasn’t lost her most important attribute: She’s still good at winning.