Dirt Destination: Junior winner Lim tries terre battue

PARIS—What was 12-year-old Rachel Lim most excited to see on her first trip to Paris? She wanted to see the city and its famous sites, but for this young tennis player there was another iconic spot she was even more interested to see, and to try.

“I wanted to see what those red clay courts were like,” Lim said.

Lim, a junior player from Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., in Westchester County, won a trip to this year’s French Open to play in the Longines Future Tennis Aces tournament, which brings together young players from around the world. To qualify, Lim had to win a 16-player tournament at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York, as well write an essay.

“We wrote about what it means to give back,” Lim said yesterday, “so that was really interesting.”

Lim comes from a tennis-playing family. She picked up a racquet at 4, and become more involved in the competitive side of the sport recently. She likes that the sport lets her make all decisions.

“I like the intensity of tennis,” she says. “I like that I can hit it hard, or hit it soft, you can do something different each shot.”

Lim lost in the Paris tournament, and may have learned something about clay-court tennis along the way. “I made too many errors,” she said, “and my opponent didn’t make as many.”

On Saturday all the participants took part in an exhibition with Steffi Graf and Sabine Lisicki, and attended the women’s singles final yesterday.

How did Lim like the red clay at Roland Garros, after all?

“It was really soft,” she said. “It felt totally different. But I could get used to it.”