by Pete Bodo
PARIS—Defending French Open champion Francesca Schiavone showed up at Stade Roland Garros today to play a quarterfinal match against Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in a pure white top and a skirt with a puffy, almost frilly bottom. But for those conspicuous white compression shorts Schiavone wore under the skirt, you could easily mistake her ensemble for a party dress. Yet for the longest time today, it looked like she was all dressed up with no place to go but down.
The stadium was nearly empty when the women started, and the day was cold and blustery, with intervals of spitting rain. The Chatrier Court, which has been Schiavone's white carriage since the start of last year's tournament, suddenly had turned into a pumpkin. For a set-and-a-half plus, the 30-year old champion looked doomed; her tennis was nothing short of cringe-worthy, and her expressive grunts (on clay, she's so creative that she even grunts differently, depending on the shot) just added to the gathering sense of pathos.
Pavlyuchenkova was conspicuously younger, faster, and stronger as she built a 6-1, 4-1 lead.
You didn't need to be a fortune-teller to read Schiavone's mind at that point. As she told us in the press conference afterward: "I am 6-1, 4-1 down, and I say, 'Francie, this is the way (it) go. Today (it is) like this. Keep going.' I was really sad inside, but what can you do? Nobody can change (it); just me."
The depth of Schiavone's misery only made her subsequent reversal of fortune that much more striking. For by the time we passed the two-hour mark in this match, Pavlyuchenkova was still undoubtedly younger (at 19, by whopping 11 years), but she no longer looked stronger and she certainly didn't look fitter. Given that Pavlyuchenkova is a big talent still learning the ropes, we'll just call that extra weight she appears to be carrying "baby fat" and drop the subject.
Experience played a role in the way Pavlyuchenkova ultimately faded while Schiavone blossomed. As Schiavone said, "I think she played really good, but maybe she had less experience than me. Today I think my 30 years old. . .I could use it."
Schiavone ulitimately won it, 1-6, 7-5, 7-5, and if the match seemed an open-and-shut case of a player (Schiavone) dangling her nose—and toes—over the precipice only to do an about-face and take control of her destiny, it was ultimately silly to talk about specific turning points, not when we had three consecutive holds only twice in the entire match, 13 breaks and 29 break points. The saving grace? Both women played bold, attacking tennis despite the difficult, windy conditions. This was anything but one of those error-strewn choking contests masquerading as a tennis match, not once we passed that second set milepost of 4-1.
I'll let Pavyluchenkova tell what happened there, given that it was the size of her check, not mine, that ultimately suffered: "I lost a little bit lost my concentration at 4 1 in the second. So everything was going well. Everything was going my way, I was dictating the game, and then all of the sudden she just took her serve at 4 1, she played good game.
"At 4-2 I lost my concentration and I wasn't aggressive enough, and I just didn't serve well. I don't know. . .That game wasn't very good for me. 4-3, she started to feel better and she found her game and was putting a lot of balls in. They were so high. It was really tough for me to attack them because they were high. I didn't feel like power anymore. I was trying to hit hard, and so she did a great job. After, she had courage, and it was tough to stop her."
That's as good an analysis as we require, and it touches on some key points, albeit obliquely. Although Pavyluchenkova played a few very strong games near the end of the match, for a long interval there she looked a little tired, a bit dull. How could it be that an, ahem, "mature" woman could wind up looking like she has more energy than a punk 29-year old? "
"I think now everybody are really fit and ready for every kind of matches and every kind of surface," Schiavone said. "So the young player are coming, but is not easy like before to win easy. Either you are a big, big talent or now you can find 28 or 30 years olds (tougher), and they use experience, they use body, mind. So for young player is much tougher now than before."
Fitness is just one piece of the success puzzle, though, and as well as Schiavone takes care of her body it also requires tools and determination to come within one match of playing a second consecutive final at Roland Garros. Schiavone has hit upon a terrific if simple game plan as her basic strategy on clay. To use her words: "The key is to play deep and with spin and as soon as I have the chance, go inside (to the net)."
Unfortunately, early in the match Schiavone had trouble keeping the ball in play long enough to set herself up for either a winning placement or an attack on the net. She was just spinning her wheels, experiencing the same troubles so familiar to rec players: "The true is that I couldn't play inside the court, inside the line."
But her patience and experience-based caution bore dividends in her most trying hour."The key is to hit three, four, five, six, seven balls," she explained, "But I couldn't arrive at three, or four. So I say, 'Keep going.' That's the way to win, or to try to do something. Otherwise if I go to the net in one shot, no way to win. . .If I have to lose, I have to lose in a right way."
Short version: Schiavone refused to panic. Players of her class are exempt from that rule saying, Never change a winning game and always change a losing one.
One thing that struck me, sitting very close to the court, is that it's difficult to get a proper appreciation, watching on television, for the amount of spin Schiavone uses and how troublesome it is for an opponent—even for one who's got Pavyluchenkova's nearly remarkable facility for meeting a ball of almost any height with the racket more or less parallel to the ground; she adjusts the plane of her stroke naturally and effectively without using more spin or wrist than she ideally wants. The admission that she felt as if she were losing power was telling. And it's not like Pavlyuchenkova, at 5' 10" is a slip of a thing.
It's obvious now that Schiavone's game somehow took a quantum leap here last year (if you can figure it out, please write), and that despite her age, despite the late coalescence of what is now a lethal clay-court style and strategy, despite the inventive and risk-friendly nature of her game (a combination that has spelled d-i-s-a-s-t-e-r for more than one player of either sex), she's not about to backslide.
On her way off the court, Schiavone bent over briefly to scoop up a handful of the granular top-dressing on Chatrier, brought it to her lips, and kissed it. Why did she do that and what was she thinking? someone asked. Schiavone smiled and said: "I couldn't go down (lower). I was pain in my legs, so I say thanks in that way. But it was a kiss."
I guess being 30 isn't always a bed of roses. Could have fooled me today.