Ratings From Roland Garros

This was a French Open that was defined and will likely be remembered for the performances of its two top players. On the women’s side, Serena Williams won when it looked like it was impossible for her to win. On the men’s side, Novak Djokovic lost when it looked like it was impossible for him to lose. Here are post-Paris assessments of those two No. 1s, and some of the men and women who played in their wake.

She called this, with a laugh, “by far the most dramatic” of her Grand Slam runs. There have been so many, we’re just going to have to take her word for it. The road to her 20th major title required her to win five three-set matches, fend off the flu, and, just when she seemed to be in the clear in the final, fight through a serious case of the yips. Most impressive was her semifinal win over Timea Bacsinszky: Down a set and a break and buried in ice towels on the sidelines, Williams had reached the point where she couldn’t miss anymore. So she didn’t. Only Serena could have won this tournament in this way, because only she has ever been this much better than the rest of the field. At 33, she’s only getting farther ahead. A+

If Stan were 20, instead of 30, we might look at his electric run through Roland Garros and think that it heralded a new, even-harder-hitting future for the men’s game. As it is, Wawrinka is a herald of nothing other than his own blazing but unpredictable self. It's hard to think of anyone else who has ever generated so much pace seemingly out of nothing, or hammered the ball the way he does with a one-handed backhand. Wawrinka, who beat the No. 1 and 2 players in the world with the loss of just one set, will likely remain a hot and cold player, but for now he offers hope that what can seem to be a fundamental and permanent flaw—in his case, negativity and doubt—is really something that can be fixed with work. By the end of this tournament, when Stan hit the ball, it sounded like it wasn’t coming back. A+

“I love Lucie Safarova!” the man at my tennis club said on Sunday. “She’s a great player and seems like a lovely person.” Talk about someone who is good for the game. Let’s hope it’s not her last deep Grand Slam run, because there are few players who are easier to root for. Safarova’s two sets of maximum aggression against Maria Sharapova, and her second-set fightback against Serena, were ball-striking runs of the highest order. And her three-double-fault near-gag against Ana Ivanovic in the semis was must-see tennis, too. A

“I’ve got to laugh to keep from crying”: That’s the lyric I thought of when Djokovic forced a smile onto his face as he accepted his runner-up plate. Eventually, a tear had to come, because this was a tough one—maybe the toughest one. Djokovic had won four straight tournaments coming to Roland Garros, but he would probably trade them all for that single victory on Sunday.

The draw didn’t do Nole any favors. As of last week, the hardest thing to do in sports was to beat Rafael Nadal at Roland Garros. What do you do for an encore? What do you do for two encores? Djokovic not only had to end Andy Murray’s winning streak on clay, he had to tame a hot-hitting Wawrinka 24 hours later. It was one obstacle too many. After bouncing back so often this season, Djokovic couldn’t mount the one match-winning run he wanted most. A

He really can play on clay. In the third and fourth sets against Djokovic, Murray dug as deeply and competed as well as I’ve seen him compete since 2013. But while he has learned to play on crushed brick, he still can’t run through Nole’s brick wall. A-

His best effort at his home Slam. Of all the homages we’ve seen to Gustavo Kuerten's clay heart inside Chatrier, Jo’s “Roland Je T’aime” after his quarterfinal win was the most Guga-worthy yet. A-

She deserved better than a 6-0 send-off from Serena. Bacsinszky’s nothing-fazes-me attitude, and finely struck, shoot-from-the-hip two-handed backhand, would be welcome in more Slam semis. A-

She showed a flash of the old ball-striking skills. Then she showed why only take her so far. B+

In the least likely of places, Sock injected an American flavor—big serve, big forehand—into the next men’s generation. He says he has grown up some, and it looked like it in Paris. B+

As Caroline Garcia shrunk from the Chatrier crowd, Cornet embraced it, and gave us a GIF-tastic run to the round of 16. B+

She was calm and composed, and she was a few games away from becoming one of the few women to beat both of the Williams sisters in a single event. Against Serena, Sloane tried to get aggressive at the end, only to be reminded that aggression isn’t her natural game. She needs to be patient, but she also needs to learn how to take a match when it presents itself. B

She failed to finish off Serena again, but she helped give us a final-worthy match, and a final-worthy press conference, in the third round. B

Each of the game’s new faces has his or her specialty; this 18-year-old’s is making comebacks. That alone should make him a must-watch. B

He’s a great player, he has had a great season, and he is, if you look at his stats, money in deciding sets. But recently it has felt like he’s run into a big-match ceiling. B-

This was the major where he had the lowest expectations coming in, but he must have hoped for better than a straight-set hammering at the hands of Wawrinka, who had never beaten him at a Slam before. If there’s anything to worry about going into the grass season, it’s that he has struggled mightily to return first serves in his last two losses, to Stan in Paris and Djokovic in Rome. Now the heart of his season begins. B-

He said he wasn’t happy with the (lack of) fight that he showed in his 6-1 third-set loss against Djokovic, but I’m inclined to give him a pass, considering all of the fighting he has done over the years. Afterward, there were more questions about whether this was the beginning of the end for Rafa than I expected. As far as his immediate future goes, I can see why: He’s down to an almost incomprehensible No. 10 in the rankings, and the grass season, which has not been kind to him the last three years, is up next. But while Nadal is down at the moment, he is still just 29; do we really think that he doesn’t have at least one more climb left in him? As we saw in the men’s draw this year, good things can happen to tennis players in their 30s. B-

Lindsay Davenport, commentating on Kvitova as she was losing the second set to Bacsinszky: "The good thing is, she's used to this." Mary Carillo: "You mean she's used to herself?" On to Wimbledon. C+

She was sick, and then she ran into a buzzsaw called Lucie Safarova. C+

His self-described phoenix-like rise from the ashes against Pablo Cuevas in the third round was the tournament’s delirious peak. The jokey throwaway point he played at 40-0 in the first game of the third set against Federer was its face-palming low. Federer came back to break, and ran away with the match from there. An inglorious end to a home-court campaign that seemed to have so much potential. C

She vowed after the Australian Open to fight, but she offered less resistance as her second-round match against Mirjana Lucic-Baroni progressed. C-

“The floppage of the year,” is how one Aga fan described her first-round loss to Annika Beck. “Please tell us this is rock bottom,” the rest of them are saying now. C-