The Heat is On
After a crazy day, Djokovic and Fonseca make their first date
PARIS – In the French capital, they are risking fines and jumping into canals to get a break from the heat, which has hit record highs in France for the month of May.
Things have gotten a little crazy under the misting machines and ice towels at Roland Garros, as well. Wednesday was one of the wilder rides at any major tennis tournament as players tried to stay cool and keep their cool on the red clay that only makes it harder work to get what you really want.
In no particular order, or perhaps it was disorder, there was a major upset, a scary collapse in victory, a scarier injury in defeat, a face-to-face dispute, a stirring comeback from two sets down, an around-the-post winner, a missing coach, an impending lawsuit and, in potentially happier news, an impending marriage proposal.
Such a sprawling tennis story-scape took me back to the years when I used to cover the sport as a daily print journalist for the International Herald Tribune and New York Times. A session like this at a major cried out for a “sweeper” game story, one that wove all these disparate elements into more cohesive cloth. The French tennis writers used to call it a chapeau: the story at the top of the page that covers most of the bases, hopefully with a theme.
On Wednesday, it kept coming back to the heat, which, by Melbourne or Miami standards, is not all that extreme but is surprisingly brutal by Roland Garros norms at 30 to 33 degrees celsius day after day.
In some previous years, amid cool and unrelentingly soggy weather, we have dubbed this tournament “The Drench Open”. That still applies, only this year it is an Open drenched with sweat.
Faces were flushed again on Wednesday. Nerves were frayed. Limits were pushed.
On Court 7, China’s Wang Xinyu crossed to her opponent Tamara Korpatsch’s side of the net to question and take a closer look at a ball mark. That was not only a breach of etiquette (and an unwitting tribute to Martina Hingis) but against the rules. Wang was given a code violation for unsportsmanlike conduct and given the cold shoulder by Korpatsch, who declined to shake her hand after winning their second-round duel.
Just a few paces away, on Court 6, Jakub Mensik somehow willed his way through cramps and an extended fifth-set match tiebreaker against Mariano Navone before dropping to the clay after four hours and 41 minutes and staying there for a frighteningly long time. Navone crossed over to shake his hand and even help him to his feet, but Mensik was unable to accept the favor. Down he remained before a medical team arrived to offer him a wheelchair, which he ultimately did not need when he at last hobbled off.
Mensik was reassuringly lucid in the press room after cooling down and was on some sort of road to recovery, but the match that followed on Court 6 did not get nearly so happy an ending. Trailing Wang Xiyu 4-5 in the first set, American Hailey Baptiste leaped high to smack a forehand from deep behind the baseline and landed at an awkard angle, her left knee buckling as she screamed and crumpled to the clay. There would be more screams as Baptiste stayed down clutching her leg: her father there by her side after jumping from the stands. It was a heart-wrenching scene, and Baptiste, unable to continue, was sadly in full need of her wheelchair as she was rolled off to the locker room. Her breakthrough season, which has included an upset of No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka in Madrid and a spot in the top 30, is now at risk of coming to an abrupt halt. American network TNT later reported that Baptiste would have surgery and likely miss at least six months.
Other defeats seemed like trifles in comparison: Jasmine Paolini’s three-set loss to Solana Sierra and, most surprisingly, No. 2 seed Elena Rybakina’s three-set loss to unseeded Ukrainian Yuliia Starodubtseva, a late-arriving talent at age 26 who spent five years at Old Dominion University in the United States and needed an online fundraising campaign to give the tour a try.
This spring, she qualified in Charleston, beat Madison Keys and reached the final to launch her claycourt season, but that was apparently just a warmup.
Rybakina has won the biggest titles in the last seven months: the WTA Finals and the Australian Open. But since winning Stuttgart indoors on clay she has been less convincing. She seems to struggle in the heat, as she did in defeat in the magnificent Indian Wells final against Sabalenka in March. But Rybakina certainly had her chances on Wednesday. Starodubtseva twice had to serve to stay in the match before prevailing 3-6, 6-1, 7-6 (10-4).
Starodubtseva is coached by her boyfriend Pearse Dolan, who played on the Old Dominion men’s team. He may not be just her boyfriend much longer. “He told me if I break through top 50, he’ll propose,” she volunteered on Wednesday with a grin. “He’s getting scared now.”
Now 54 in the live rankings, she will be a lock for top 50 if she wins her third-round match versus Wang Xiyu.
Not every player had a coach on Wednesday. Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, who faced Thiago Agustin Tirante, said that Mariano Puerta, the 2005 French Open finalist who had been working with him, abruptly ended their relationship by text without warning after the first round and flew back to Miami.
“We had a good relationship; nothing happened, no tension,” Davidovich Fokina said. “Now he has blocked both me and my wife on social media.”
We await Puerta’s side of the story, but Davidovich, who lost to Tirante, is out of the French Open in the second round. So is rising star Alexander Blockx from Belgium and without playing a point. Blockx sprained an ankle on Tuesday during a practice session with Brazilian 19-year-old Joao Fonseca, stepping on a rolled-up tarp near the back of the court. Blockx withdrew from his second-round match with Alex de Minaur, and his coach Ruben Bemelmans told The Athletic that Blockx will consider seeking compensation from French Open organizers.
Fonseca plays on, however, and remains one of the most promising talents in the sport. He faced another, Dino Prizmic of Croatia, in the rowdy, sunken confines of Court 14 on Wednesday.
Fonseca’s Brazilian supporters, as now customary, gave him unflagging positive feedback, and he needed it to rally from a two-set deficit for the first time and win 3-6, 4-6, 6-3, 6-1, 6-2.
Fonseca was in tears shortly after his final forehand winner, and his victory earned him the chance for another first: a match with Novak Djokovic that Fonseca has been craving for years. It has been a growing-pains season so far for the young Brazilian, with deep runs and routine victories hard to muster. He has played Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner and Alexander Zverev in the last three months, losing to them all but not in a hurry and showing flashes of what might be. He has repeatedly expressed his desire to face Djokovic before Djokovic slid (and stretched) off into the sunset.
“I just want to have this experience in my life,” Fonseca said. “I think I'm just going to enjoy it. I mean, being in Roland Garros, third round, for me it's just a dream. I'm going to enjoy every moment playing against an idol, the GOAT of the sport. Hopefully I can do a great match.”
At 39, Djokovic has nothing obvious left to prove while Fonseca, at 19, has everything left to prove, but Djokovic’s remarkable longevity and drive keep giving the youngsters a chance to test themselves against the champion they grew up watching on their screens.
It’s not getting easier for the aging lion. After a forced layoff because of a shoulder injury, he was beaten by the 20-year-old Prizmic in his opening match in Rome this month and had to scrap again to advance on Wednesday against 24-year-old unseeded Frenchman Valentin Royer on the Chatrier Court. Djokovic, cap and game in place, swept through the first two sets in sparkling form before matters became much more complicated in the third.
Djokovic, twice up a break, failed to consolidate and also failed to convert a match point in the tiebreaker after Royer, with the crowd on the Chatrier Court behind him, held firmer in a long, probing rally.
It was soon two sets to one with Djokovic, playing only his third claycourt match of the season, looking weary in the oppressive conditions. French television reported that he had requested this day slot after struggling to get to sleep after his night-session victory in the first round over another young Frenchman, Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard. But at this stage, the cool of the evening must have seemed very appealing.
After Djokovic struggled to hold in the opening game of the fourth, he broke protocol by taking a seat on the changeover. He needed the rest, but as so often, found a way to gather himself and lock down with the crowd and the momentum against him.
He got a jump on a Royer forehand and reached it in time to nail it for a winner around the net post to hold to 2-1, leaving Royer open mouthed and fans clutching the tops of their heads. Djokovic then broke the Frenchman with a forehand crosscourt winner. At 5-3, he served for it and needed three deuces and four more match points before finally closing out the 6-3, 6-2, 6-7 (7), 6-3 victory after nearly four hours when the sliding Royer’s forehand slice hit the tape.
“I hope I don’t play any more Frenchmen for the rest of the tournament,” Djokovic said.
Beloved elder status is indeed elusive, and the Brazilians, if they can procure the tickets on Friday, are not going to be any quieter. Fonseca’s thunderous forehand and dynamic game style could pose quite a threat to late-in-the-game Djokovic, despite all his wiles.
“I think he's a big-stage player,” Djokovic said. “He really loves the occasion, loves to play night sessions. He played a great match with Sinner earlier this year at Indian Wells. He won against Rublev in Australia (last year), straight sets. So he can definitely step up in the big occasion and deliver big shots, big game.”
The heat is still on in Paris.
CC
A "chapeau" indeed! So glad to get the whole recap, including Fokina coach...this is turning into a French Open that feels like a season of White Lotus or some other dramedy....
Sounds like a real bain Turque over there and a whole lot to write about, but you juggled it perfectly, keeping all the balls in the air. I'm very distressed by Hailey Baptiste's injury, because—don't tell anybody—I was secretly harboring the hope that she would pull off the shocker of winning this French, a hope engendered by her recent defeat of World No. 1 Sabalenka in Madrid. I have a special affection for Haitians, as one of my best friends in the 1980s was a Haitian, and I found that I could bandy about his Haitian-French with him, and, well, you know, Hailey is of Haitian descent and has a super-nice personality. But it sounds, to my regret, like her injury is pretty bad. But all the suspense now is as to how Djokovic will fare against Fonseca. My hope for the Old Boy is that Fonseca's five-setter against Prizmic may have taken the Mickey out of him. It's comforting to know that you'll be on the job covering it.