French Open 2013: The good, the sublime, the bad and the ugly

The Bad

It feels a bit strange, and maybe also a little harsh, to put Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in this category. But as well as he played to bundle Roger Federer out of the tournament at the quarterfinal stage, his subsequent collapse against David Ferrer in the semifinal was both unexpected and distasteful. It’s not the fact that he lost to Ferrer (who is an excellent claycourter by any measure) that was disappointing, but the way he lost. Tsonga has defeated the likes of Federer and Nadal at a Slam before, so his quarterfinal victory here wasn’t particularly ground-breaking. Sadly, the next step that we’ve been waiting for from Tsonga – the ability to string together two or three quality victories, rather than flame out after registering just one – was, yet again, sorely missing.

Tsonga’s fellow member of the ‘Big Boy’ club, Tomas Berdych, did a lot worse, flaming out before registering even a single win, let alone a quality one. And the biggest of the Big Boys, John Isner, got himself tangled in yet another marathon, except that this time he failed to eke out the win, and the marathon wasn’t anywhere close to being a classic of any sort. How many more of these torturous Isner five-setters will we have to sit through? The man is almost single-handedly making the case for the introduction of fifth-set tiebreakers at all the Slams.

Li Na

On the women’s side, Li Na gave further evidence as to why she can never be trusted to consistently perform to her potential. Bethanie Mattek-Sands played exceptionally well in their second round match, but it was still Li’s match to lose, which she did without any qualms by putting up an uninspired display in the 3rd set. The supremely talented Chinese had shown signs of great progress by reaching the Australian Open final in January, but this is a big step back for her. The story of her career, really.