No. 4 of '17: Ostapenko extends Halep's misery with maiden major title

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Jelena Ostapenko d. Simona Halep 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, French Open, final

Sometimes it starts with the most innocuous mistakes, ones that are made when the match seems all but over and the fans are hardly paying attention anymore.

Roughly an hour into the French Open final, Simona Halep led Jelena Ostapenko 6-4, 3-0, and had break points to make it 4-0. With defense, depth and consistency, Halep had been patiently grinding away and judiciously picking her spots to attack. At the same time, the Latvian’s low-margin, go-for-broke game appeared, finally, to have broken down.

By 0-3 in the second set, Ostapenko was shrugging in resignation after each mistake. Nobody would have blamed the 20-year-old for not winning her first major final. One more miss and the title looked sure to be Halep’s.

Except that it was Halep who missed. Nothing terrible, really; no blatant gags or easy shots horrifically botched. On one break point, Halep flipped a running forehand wide. On another, she was late on a down-the-line backhand, and that too landed wide. But with those two shots this final, and French Open history, had changed. Ostapenko held for 1-3 with a forehand winner. Now that she was on the board, she could think about working her way back into the match.

From that point on a pattern emerged: Ostapenko, going for winners on the first chance she had—and sometimes when she had no chance at all—would miss just often enough to give Halep a lead in a game or a set. But whenever she absolutely had to have a point, Ostapenko found a way to connect. She finished with 54 winners and 54 errors, but every winner seemed to come exactly when she needed one. Her shot selection was like The Simpsons’ description of alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.

Ostapenko started by saving those break points at 0-3 in the second set. At 2-3, she saved two more, one with a backhand winner that skidded off the sideline, and another with a strong first serve down the T that caught Halep off guard. At 3-3, Ostapenko gave away two break points, then broke through on the third with a swing volley winner. And serving for the set, in a match that featured 14 service breaks, she suddenly held for the set with, you guessed it, three winners.

The key, according to Ostapenko, was to ignore the mistakes and have faith that an attacking mindset was the surest way to make her game come around. And why wouldn’t she have that faith? Over those two weeks in Paris, the unseeded, 47th-ranked Ostapenko had endured countless ups and downs on her magical ride to the final. Four of her six wins had come in three sets; why couldn’t it happen a fifth time?

HIGHLIGHTS:

“I was just trying to stay aggressive,” Ostapenko said. “I knew if I’m going to stay aggressive, in a couple of games I’ll feel my game and start to play better.”

The only way to get to the winners, in other words, was to make the errors.

Ostapenko was right, and the pattern held through the third set. Again, she got down early and appeared to be a point or two from defeat. This time Halep went up 3-1 and served for 4-1. Again, Ostapenko broke with a return of serve winner, and held with a backhand crosscourt winner.

At 3-3, fortune gave Ostapenko’s title run its final blessing. With Halep serving at 30-40, break point, Ostapenko hit a backhand that was heading wide, until it clipped the tape and somehow reversed course and bounced back into the singles court for a winner.

With fate smiling on her, and Halep dazed, Ostapenko ran away with the last two games. She finished the match the only way she could: On her first championship point, on the first shot, she aimed for the corner with a backhand return, and found it.

“I was just, ‘OK, I have nothing to lose, I’m just going to hit winner,” Ostapenko said when she was asked what she was thinking on match point. “Or if I miss, OK, I have another one.”

No loss could have stung more for Halep. After succeeding with a patience for a set and a half, she couldn’t adjust and swing away when that tactic stopped working. Her misses at 0-3 in the second, those seemingly innocent misses that led to her downfall, reminded me of the way Guillermo Coria missed on his two match points in the 2004 French final. He was a little late on a couple of shots that he would normally have made in his sleep; it was as if the pressure of the moment had added an extra weight to his legs and his racquet.

Halep’s mistakes, and her loss, felt the same. While the 20-year-old Ostapenko played with ease and freedom, the 25-year-old Halep, who was the tentative favorite throughout the tournament, was just a little too weighed down by nerves to hit out and play her best.

Always honest, Halep admitted as much in her gracious, painful trophy speech.

“Maybe I wasn’t ready to win it,” Halep said.

“Let’s keep working,” she told her somber family and team members in the stands. “Let’s believe.”

That belief hasn’t won her a major title yet, but it has since taken her to the No. 1 ranking.

As for Ostapenko’s maiden Slam, she summed up the experience in three words: “Everything is amazing.”

Her meteoric rise to fame was a much-needed injection of youth into a veteran-dominated season. Whatever she does in the immediate future—and there will likely be as many downs as ups—for now we have the memory of a young player who wasn’t afraid to embrace the moment and take it into her own hands.

It wasn’t perfection that brought Ostapenko the French Open; it was having the faith that only by living with her flaws would she find her strengths.