Winning isn’t important to 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams? “Success is in her DNA!” says Gigi Salmon.
Salmon reviews a chaotic French Open with plenty of upsets and two new Grand Slam champions. The Sky Sports presenter also looks forward to the return of 23-time major winner Williams! It’s all in her latest column…
Taking a quick look back at my French Open predictions of Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek I am comforted by the fact that I’m far from being alone in getting them very wrong!
The 15 days that I have just spent in Paris answered the question that I am sometimes asked as to why I love the sport of tennis so much.
Unpredictability, heroic feats, fairy-tales, life-changing runs, new names to watch out for, new champions crowned and in among all of this news that a legend of the game and in the many people’s eyes the all-time GOAT of the sport will be making a return on the grass!
Chwalinska’s ‘disruptive style’ and potential Wimbledon wild card
Lets start with the fairy-tale. In how many sports can you arrive at an event with only enough money to pay for a handful of nights’ accommodation for you and your team which you feel will be more than enough. Then, three weeks later, you find yourself in the final on debut of one of the biggest tennis tournaments in the world, playing for a Grand Slam title and a winners cheque of €2.8m.
That’s what happened to the little-known Polish player Maja Chwalinska who entered French Open qualifying as the world No 114, going on to beat four top-50 players and a former Australian Open champion with her disruptive style of tennis, making up for her lack of raw power with heavy spin, perfect drop shots and slice which give her opponents very little rhythm.
What is more extraordinary about the 24-year-old is that she has already been through so much, stepping away from the sport back in 2021 when she fell in Wimbledon qualifying, suffering from depression having got to the stage where she associated tennis with ‘pressure, stress and crying’.
Chwalinska leaves Paris with her life forever changed having climbed nearly 100 places in the rankings to 21, with a cheque for €1.4m, new sponsors, entry into all the top tier events and talk of a possible wild card to Wimbledon later this month where she would to many players relief be among the seeded players.
Congratulations to new Grand Slam champion Mirra Andreeva, still only 19 but fulfilling the potential that many first saw when she burst onto the tour as a 15-year-old in Madrid with talent to burn and a temper to match, both of which have been harnessed by former Wimbledon champion and Andreeva’s coach Conchita Martinez.
Osaka’s outfits cause a stir
Naomi Osaka came out in a black corset and cascading skirt, designed by couturier Kevin Germanier
Other highlights from the women’s event, a run to the semi-finals by Marta Kostyuk who won Madrid earlier in the year, and the outfits of Naomi Osaka. Like them or not, and in Paris Osaka played in a glittering gold dress, they bring attention to the sport and highlight that it’s okay to be you. Even if some of her opponents were less than impressed, with Laura Siegemund who said when asked about Osaka’s outfit: “I couldn’t care less, I come here to play tennis, not to put on a fashion show.”
Early on we knew there would be a new champion in the men’s event, with only two former winners starting out in the draw. Stan Wawrinka in his final French Open would lose in the first round, while Novak Djokovic in his 82nd Grand Slam appearance would face a third-round exit at the hands of Brazilian teenager Joao Fonseca who came from two sets down to beat him.
Sinner’s kryptonite
Jannik Sinner’s second-round exit was the biggest story of the tournament
It took a couple of rounds for people to get over the second-round exit of Jannik Sinner, with an Italian journalist telling me that his defeat sent shockwaves right across Italy.
The heat played its part, stifling conditions in a best-of-five-set format saw semi-finalist Jakub Mensik leave the court in a wheelchair after his four-hour, 41-minute second-round win over Mariano Navone.
Heat being Sinner’s kryptonite is a discussion that will continue to be had and a record was set for the longest match at any Grand Slam with a final set tie-break, as Juan Manuel Cerundolo (who beat Sinner) came through 10-8 in the fifth set tie-break against Martin Landaluce in four hours and 58 minutes, which will also go down as the third-longest match in the tournament’s history.
Seven broken ligaments and two fractured bones
Alexander Zverev is a divisive figure due to a number of high profile off-court incidents
Sascha Zverev became the favourite as the second seed and someone who had been to a Grand Slam final before, including in Paris in 2024 when he was one set away from beating Carlos Alcaraz in the final.
The German was quietly going about his business in a very efficient way but as I wrote in my preview piece the deeper he went would he be able to keep the Grand Slam demons at bay.
I will freely admit that I didn’t think Zverev – having already been to three Grand Slam finals – would win a Grand Slam title, I also never expected the draw to open up quite as spectacularly as it did.
That said he still had to go out and get the job done. Zverev is a divisive figure due to a number of high profile off-court incidents. I will let you come to your own conclusions on those while I stick to the tennis and on that front his effort, desire and determination can’t be faulted.
It has been his ‘holy grail’ and while at 29 he is still young in tennis terms, many – and I’m sure Zverev himself – wondered if he would ever reach his goal.
Facing the Italian Flavio Cobolli, who was in his first Grand Slam final, when it went to a fifth set I said in commentary, ‘will Zverev become passive, will the scar tissue prove too much’ and then a shot of Dominic Thiem on the big screen, who beat him in the US Open final in 2020 when Zverev served for the title. We all thought, that can’t be a good sign!
Four hours and 15 minutes later Zverev, who four years ago lay crumpled in a heap on the same court with seven broken ligaments and two fractured bones, was the French Open champion.
Serena’s return
If the events of the French Open weren’t enough to keep everyone involved in the media side of things very busy and on the edge of their seat, the news we had been expecting broke that Serena Williams was making a return to tennis.
A legend of the game back for more and why? “It’s really about my kids getting to see me play.”
She says the winning isn’t important to her but I don’t see a world in which Williams – the owner of 23 Grand Slam titles – doesn’t want to win. It’s in her DNA!
Williams turns 45 in September, is a mother of two young girls and will start on the doubles court at Queens this week alongside Victoria Mboko, with Berlin to follow.
It’s doubles for now with Williams saying: “I feel like I probably need to train a little bit more if I want to play singles and we’ll see if I get there.”
We will also see if she asks for a wild card into Wimbledon for doubles, singles or both and then to the US Open, the perfect platform to play both. Possibly alongside sister Venus, but only time will tell!
What a summer it’s going to be Serena back on tour, Andy Murray coaching Jack Draper through the grass, two new Grand Slam champions to bed in, no Carlos Alcaraz at Wimbledon, Sinner hoping that we won’t have an unusually hot British summer as his next event will be Wimbledon, and Djokovic still in search of that illusive 25th Grand Slam title!
I’m not sure where I would even start with predictions but I am looking forward to cleaning off the clay and getting ready for the grass!
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: skynews.com
