Plus: Recap the three-peats of Rafael Nadal in the men's final and Justine Henin in the women's final.

By Peter Bodo

The French Open of 2007 was an unusual tournament in one noteworthy way: it was an event with few great matches, but many great stories. A surprising and satisfying narrative leading to a predictable end – that being the triumphs of the two towering clay-court players of the present time: Rafael Nadal and Justine Henin-Hardenne.

So let’s take a look at the main stories, and how they played out.

Roger Federer vs. Rafael Nadal: For the past three years in tennis, this story has been the equivalent of Gone With the Wind, or Dr. Zhivago, and so it was once again. Going into this year’s event, the new twists in the plot were an unexpected, assumption-shattering win by Federer over Nadal in Hamburg, in the last major tournament before Roland Garros.

The pundits went to work on that one. In one camp, the rallying cry was: Federer has finally gotten over the hump, he’s figured out Nadal! In the other, Nadal camp, the story line went something like this: in ending Nadal’s 81-match clay-court winning streak, Federer was poking the sleeping dog with a stick. Nadal was plumb worn out in Hamburg, but the loss – especially to Federer – did what no win over Federer in Hamburg could have accomplished: provide Nadal with enormous motivation to restore the established clay-court imbalance of power.

But while the speculation and hype leading up to the final was almost Byzantine (one colleague of mine even suggested that Nadal was “setting Roger up” for Paris), the end was anti-climactic. Federer looked overburdened and in over his head as he never led, and went down to Nadal in four sets.

Then there was the tale of the Serbs. Three of them arrived in the Roland Garros semifinals: Ana Ivanovic, Jelena Jankovic, and Novak Djokovic.

Ivanovic earned her spot with some stirring, seductive power tennis, establishing herself as a successor to Jennifer Capriati’s legacy of powerful, clean ball-striking off both wings. Like Capriati, Ivanovic is solidly built, and has little trouble making enough power to roll over opponents. But she is more fleet and sure-footed than Capriati, and blessed with a less moody temperament. She beat two high seeds, Svetlana Kuznetsova (No. 3) and Maria Sharapova (No. 2) to make the final.

The other Serbian woman, Jankovic, had a less daunting mission. The mileposts on her journey were a second-round, two-set win over Venus Williams, and a quarterfinal dismantling of Nicole Vaidisova’s one-speed, Sharapova-esque power game. Both of the Serbian girls ultimately came afoul of Justine Henin, who took care of them in back-to-back matches starting with a semifinal rout of Jankovic.

The Vitches were joined by Djokovic, who many ultimately felt was perhaps the second best male player in the tournament. He slugged it out in the semifinals with Rafael Nadal, but the 20-year-old Djokovic just didn’t have the strength and stamina to keep up with the best clay-court player since Bjorn Borg. You could see the power leach away in the 7-5,6-4,6-2 loss.

The Serbian girls got a grand total of seven games off Henin to deflate hopes for either a fairy-tale ending (a maiden Grand Slam title for Ivanovic) - or a modicum of drama.

But never mind: the real story was the continuing shift in the geopolitics of tennis. The Eastern European nations and Russia continued to be emerging powers, as Serbs and Russians accounted for fully half of the singles’ quarterfinalists.

The other mini-series-grade story was that of Henin, and her reunion with her family, most of whom were present at one time or another at the event, after not having seen Henin play live in over seven years. The rift that occurred back then – for reasons Henin does not want to discuss – was healed in April, when Justine’s brother, David, was hospitalized and in a coma for two days following a car crash. Henin visited him in the hospital, and that began a family healing process that ended with Justine on the winner’s podium, acknowledging the family from whom she had been estranged for so long.

It was, as far as stories go, the kind of family saga that is bound to move anyone who watches it unfold. Perhaps Henin was fortunate to get a green, nervous Ivanovic in the final; it took away any pressure she might have felt to win for her family. But as good as everyone felt for Justine, most spectators and pundits were muttering: Great story, lousy match.

Maybe you can’t have it both ways.