Notes from French Open 2013

MATCH OF THE TOURNAMENT

The Nadal-Djokovic matches more often than not turn out to be marathons filled with drama, tension and a lot of physical rallies. We got one at the French championships as well. Nadal outlasted the World No.1 to cut short his comeback and win his semi-final match; however, there was another match that in my opinion surpassed this one in the quality of tennis that it brought out.

(9) Stanislas Wawrinka beat (7) Richard Gasquet 6-7(5) 4-6 6-4 7-5 8-6, 4^th round

Mind-blowing – to sum up the match in one word! Wawrinka was 2-sets-to-love down; he was up against a local lad with a vocal crowd behind him; he was battling with a dodgy hamstring that threatened to keep him out of the tournament even before it started. However, these were barely the reasons why this match stood out.

We got to witness 2 gladiators who left it all out on the tennis court. We witnessed two players throw caution to the winds and relentlessly go for their shots. not backing an inch. There were no half-hearted measures in this one as the second best players of their respective countries teed off in a contest of epic proportions that lasted 4-and-a-half hours.

With the stakes getting that much higher towards sets 4 and 5, the tennis from both players reached stratospheric levels. Unforced errors became a forgotten commodity and taking its place were sumptuous winners from the rackets of the two men. On top of it, both players looked to be physically struggling during the game at varying times and yet somehow there was no let-off in the quality of tennis that they continued to produce as one beautiful winner followed the other.

Wawrinka hit 92 winners in the game including 30 return winners; Gasquet hit 57, making 10 return winners. The leader in that category is obviously the John Isner-Nicolas Mahut mega-marathon from Wimbledon 2010 which had 490 winners almost equally shared! However, that was inevitable considering the sheer volume of games that were played. A year earlier though, the final of the Championships saw 181 winners in total – 74 from the racket of Andy Roddick who finished runner-up to Roger Federer who had 107 winners.