Petit Choux: Game breakers

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Roland Garros 2026: Order of Play | Draws | Live Scores

• Round 1 concludes on Tuesday. Side note: I really, truly, dislike three-day starts. The dilution is noticeable.
• Here’s what I’ve got my eye on: Osaka-Siegemund, Gauff-Townsend, Mboko-Bartunkova, Noskova-Sakkari, Tien-Garin, Navarro-Tjen.

Heat wave at French Open impacts the clay courts and sends fans to sprinklers

Tennis players at the French Open say they haven’t experienced conditions this hot at Roland Garros since the Paris Olympics. Temperatures for the opening two days of the clay-court Grand Slam have soared to 33 degrees C (91 F) — far beyond normal for late May in the French capital.

Yahoo SportsANDREW DAMPF

• Here is a hot take that I’ve had simmering for a while: Being a well-rounded tennis player is overrated. The desire and impulse to be awesome at every facet of the game is a beautiful goal to have, but I’ve seen so many players with game-breaking talents lose themselves in that quest. I think of, for example, Petra Kvitova and Jelena Ostapenko, players with unplayable power, spending a career vacillating between doubling down on that power vs. rounding out their games at the expense of their power. I’ve been in too many interviews with Petra and Penko, where they talk about patience, extending rallies, being more consistent. Of course, that’s the platonic ideal of tennis, but…at what cost?

• That Shania Twain song always kicks off when I hear players veer too far in that direction. You gotta dance with the one that brought you. Petra did not blast her 200+ winners en route to her first Wimbledon title by not being a first-ball striker. And Penko did not win Roland Garros by doing anything other than hitting 299 winners across her seven matches. Madison, another player who struggled to find the line between aggression and consistency, finally got her Grand Slam title by banging. Know your strengths and true to yourself. “Don’t let the green grass fool you,” as Shania crooned.
• Of course there’s a middle ground. Simona Halep added offense to her game and got her two Slams. So did Angie, and she netted three. But I still get nervous when, for example, I see Aryna going to the dropshot too often. It’s cute and fun, but when push comes to shove, you gotta dance with the one that brought you.
• Iga Swiatek has been an intriguing case study in all of this, a player who is fully capable of defending and counter-punching, grinding opponents down with heavy topspin, or just straight-up flat-bashing them off the court. So when you have three distinct playbooks, how do you get it all to work together? And, when it comes to evaluating how to continually improve your game, what do you hone in on when you can do so much and therefore, improve so much. There are only so many hours on a practice court.

• The one shot that Swiatek owns that is game-breaking in the same way that her potential third-round opponent Jelena Ostapenko has power, is her topspin forehand. No one in the women’s game can hit that shot with the violent RPMs that Swiatek possesses. Combined with her flatter forehand, it is, on paper, an unbeatable combination. But it’s impossible to ignore the diminishing returns that shot has yielded in recent years, whether because she drifted too far towards a more direct game or because of its dip in quality, or because her opponents have adjusted to mitigate its damage.
• So I asked Swiatek after her first-round win over Emerson Jones, how she saw it. And I was heartened to hear her effectively say: if I focus on getting it better, it’s still a game-breaker.

Q.  Obviously your topspin and the way you can play that ball and your kick were game-breaking shots in the women's game when you first came on the scene. A lot of girls didn't know how to face it and compete with it. How have you seen that change over the course of your career in terms of how effective is it? Do you feel players are getting used to it or is it still your game-breaking kind of shot?

IGA SWIATEK: No, I mean, for sure players got used to it. I remember it was all a surprise in 2022. It was quite interesting that next year I felt totally different. I think this is what people say when they say it's harder to stay on the top, because you need to adjust your game so it's not that simple for people anymore. Yeah, they get used to it, for sure.

But on the other hand, I can still make these shots better, and they still work. It's like when I played against Ash, I knew exactly what she's gonna play, but she did it so good that I was still losing these points. I knew exactly that she's gonna slice me to the backhand. I'm gonna try to pick it up with my backhand topspin and she's gonna finish me with her forehand. But still, I played this one not so good, you know, because her slice was amazing. She played her forehand so well, that I still had no chance.

So I guess even if people know what you're gonna play if you're gonna do it good, then you might win.

• That’s a lot of words to say: You gotta dance with the one that brought ya, Iga.

• Speaking of game-breakers, Roland Garros bid adieu to Stan Wawrinka and Gael Monfils on Monday, as both fan-favorite veterans bowed out in the first round. Emblematic of both of their careers, neither went down without a fight. Wawrinka fought back against Jesper De Jong before losing in four sets, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4. Monfils took the Chatrier night session towards midnight after climbing back from 2-0 down before losing 6-2, 6-3, 3-6, 2-6, 6-0 to Hugo Gaston.

• Both Wawrinka and Monfils built careers that were so beloved by fans, players, and the media, by marrying game-breaking talent – Stan’s one-handed backhand, Gael’s other-worldly athleticism – with relatable realism. If Stan was the every-man, Gael was just the dude you wanted to hang with. Both were accessible. Neither man ever strayed far from who they were and ambitions that were also honest and humble. They were always appreciative of what they had, what they achieved, and never acted like they were entitled to more. And as they bowed out today, you never got a sense that they felt cheated by their careers, that there was something left to do, a stone unturned. Stan and Gael did things their way and they’re ending things on their terms. And they both did more than they could have ever dreamed of. There’s no sadness here. And that’s what you want.

• Sometimes you’re the game breaker, and sometimes the game breaks you. Or in Casper Ruud’s case, the weather. Coming off his semifinal in Geneva, Casper looked on his way to a straight-set win over Ernests Gulbis lookalike Roman Safiulin when he hit a physical wall and seemed to be suffering from a heat stroke.

• It looked like has going to pull the ripcord while getting bageled in the fourth set, but – PLOT TWIST – then Safiulin called a medical timeout to address a hip issue. That gave Casper some more time to hydrate and cool down, and that, combined with the off-court heat break between the fourth and fifth sets, allowed him to push past Safiulin 6-2, 7-6 (5), 5-7, 0-6, 6-2.

"This wall kind of hit me towards 5-All, 6-5 in the third. I felt really, really bad for a moment there. I just told myself I'd rather lose 0-0, but maybe he's also struggling. Then at the point he calls the physio, and at that time I had lost five, six, or maybe eight games in a row and hadn't really moved. When you don't move for 20, 30 minutes, you can conserve a bit of energy.

"I tried to do as much ice and cold water on myself as possible to lower my temperature. Then, yeah, luckily I kind of kick-started myself in the fifth.

"I also thought of Jannik and Carlos this year at Australia when they – Jannik, in particular, when he was struggling in the heat. Then it cooled off with the roof closing, and he was able to regain energy. A little bit the same with Carlos semifinal with Sascha. He looked pretty dead for a while and then lost third and fourth, and then somehow regained and came back in the fifth.

"So, you know, there are some things you think out there, and today that worked for me, yeah." 

• Zheng Qinwen will drop out of the Top 100 after losing 6-4, 6-0 to Maja Chwalinksa in Round 1. After the match, Qinwen was very candid about her disappointment, and in a rare moment, she broke down in tears during her press conference. Ever professional, she steadied herself to continue on through the questioning and props to her for doing that. She’s always been incredibly good with the media.

• Rough day for Terence Atmane, who served for the win over Thanasi Kokkinakis only to get tight, miss two sitting overheads – one he missed literally, swinging and failing to make contact – and Le Kokk Sportif pulled off another five-set miracle, winning 6-7 (5), 6-2, 4-6, 6-3, 7-5.
• You gotta see the absolute whiff from Atmane, which The Athletic has here.
• In case you missed it, hear more about Kokkinakis’ crazy pectoral surgery, which involved taking a dead man’s achilles tendon:

• Tennis Australia has their new CEO: Andrew Abdo from the National Rugby League. (AP)

Clay dreams and culture shocks: Why Australians still battle at Roland Garros

At clay court major time, if the answer is Pat Rafter, the question, probably, is this: who was Australia’s last male singles semi-finalist at Roland Garros?We’re talking about a serve-volleyer, of course. A future two-time Wimbledon finalist (on grass) and soon-to-be dual US Open champion (on hard).So, well, clay? Really? In Paris, which has hosted the least successful Slam for two generations of Australian men?Among the current cohort, world No.102 Rinky Hijikata speaks of limited exposure to

The First ServeLinda Pearce

• Nice wins for Jasmine Paolini (d. Yastremska), Elina Svitolina (d. Ana Bondar in a match tiebreak), and Daria Kasatkina (d. Zeynap Sonmez) to open their tournaments. Alycia Parks got a straight-set win over Leylah Fernandez, too.
• Rafael Jodar dropped one game in the first two sets of his Roland Garros debut. That’s pretty good. He beat Alex Kovacevic 6-1, 6-0, 6-4.

Jodar shaping up as tennis’ Next Big Thing and makes quite a debut at the French Open

Two-time reigning champion Carlos Alcaraz is out injured. Promising 21-year-old French player Arthur Fils also pulled out with a physical issue. Jack Draper has been bothered for months by a right knee problem.

Yahoo SportsANDREW DAMPF

• Andrey Rublev won the Ginger Bowl, beating Hamburg champion Ignacio Buse. Rough draw for the kid.

The Body Serve (@thebodyserve.bsky.social)

Randomly just passed Jannik Sinner walking down the street in the 8th arrondissement 😂

Bluesky SocialThe Body Serve

• I truly with all my heart and soul hate this question to Stan Wawrinka:

"Q.  Congratulations for all your career. If you will have a son and you will have to tell him one phrase, saying I have been able to do this, what will you tell him?"

• Why? Because Stan has a teenage daughter. And we all know this.

• Let’s check in on The Enhanced Games, shall we?

• Here’s a random French fact I learned when I went to pharmacy to pick up some French skincare products: the French invented micellar water because the water in France tends to be hard, which is drying to the skin. So women wanted to minimize having to wash their faces. So that’s why micellar water exists! The more you know.
• Related: Oh wow that Bioderma Micellar Water really is THAT girl. It’s been a godsend. You can also find it for like 9 Euros a bottle here. Viva la France!
• Signing off from Day 2 by quoting the ever-gritty Elina Svitolina: "I have to find also the ways where when I push myself to 100% that I also have the rest and the balance of the scheduling and just have myself a good rest before going into the hell again."
• Bop of the Day: French “Challengers” feat. Baby Novak and Gael.