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ROLAND GARROS 2015 - DAY 11 IP: 46.255.183.159 Posted on June 3, 2015 at 11:53:48 PM by David Barnes
ROLAND GARROS 2015
WEDNESDAY 3 JUNE - DAY 11
With time to kill before the 2pm start on the show courts this afternoon, I went over to see how some familiar names were doing in the Legends tournament - the men on Court 1, the women on Court 2.
It was sad to see acres of empty seating on Court 1, where the McEnroe brothers were playing Pat Cash and Andres Gomez in the Over 45s event, but this was not because the public were indifferent, rather because the seats in the central 'reserved' part of the stand and in the press area were unoccupied. Perrier (who sponsor the Legends Tour) had just under 100 seats blocked off, of which fewer than a dozen or so were taken; another block marked 'Tribune Generale' or 'Tribune Internationale', for players' guests and officials, had easily another 150 or so, while in the press area, which holds 60, I counted only four scribblers apart from myself. Meanwhile the queues to get in to the main stands, where every seat was taken, snaked around the court and blocked the walkways outside. "C'est en effet scandaleux", and the organisers should, one would have thought, have given the general public access to the seats reserved for the bigwigs.
The McEnroe brothers, while they attempt humour from time to time, do not practice the easygoing tomfoolery of the legendary Mansour Bahroumi, possibly because John McEnroe gets so irritated when he misses shots; the sense of bewildered rage which he directs towards himself leaves little space for other emotions. Today he was also having a go at a cameraman in one of the dugouts behind the court, who had the temerity to take pictures during play but who neglected, while doing so, to muffle the noise of his camera' shutter. Old habits die hard for the Big Mac, it would seem.
Over on Court 2, meanwhile, Kim Clijsters and Martina Navratilova took on the French pair of Nathalie Tauziat and Sandrine Testud. This was a entertainingly close match, full of angled ground-strokes and delicate footwork, as Navratilova in particular rolled back the years to produce a performance that reminded spectators of just why she won 18 singles and 41 doubles Grand Slam titles in her 30-odd year career. The ladies managed to avoid the sort of profanities that McEnroe was reprising in his match, and Clijsters and Navratilova edged past their opponents 6-3, 6-7, 13-11, in almost an hour and a half of fun-filled, blasphemy-free, entertainment.
It proved similarly hard to tear oneself away from Philippe Chatrier, where Novak Djokovic was 4-0 up in the first set of his quarterfinal against Rafael Nadal, when David Ferrer and Andy Murray came out to do battle over on Suzanne Lenglen; the contest between the nine-time champion and the Serb, desperate to win this tournament for the first time, proved compelling, Shakespearian in its dramatic intensity and emotional resonance. The first set had drama enough for an entire match: leading 4-3, Djokovic fluffed an easy forehand and was broken for the second time himself, for 4-4; trailing 5-4, Rafa received a time violation warning, then dumped a smash into the net, while the normally implacable Djokovic squandered three set points and was much discomforted in a manner he rarely lets us witness. The Serb took the first set at the sixth attempt when the Spaniard, normally so precise and clinical at the net, put a backhand volley wide.
The second and third sets saw the Serb pressurise Nadal in a way that few other players have traditionally been able to do; he was especially proficient in dealing with Rafa's second serve; Djokovic won the second set 6-3 in 45 minutes, the third 6-1 in little more than 30, for a straight sets victory, in under two and a half hours, that Robin Soderling had been unable to achieve in 2009, the only other time Rafa has lost here in 72 matches. Rafa said afterwards; "Novak is always a champion, and it is always a pleasure to play against him. Novak was better than me. That's it. Here is simple; when the opponent plays better than you and is in better shape than you, then can happen, and I just congratulate him". Djokovic himself ran out of steam in his on-court interview (he now conducts these in French, which is winning him new fans and admirers by the match); "That's enough - I have no more words".
Murray beat Ferrer in four sets, 7-6, 6-2, 5-7, 6-1 in a three and a quarter hours; less a gladiatorial contest, more a war of attrition, with skirmishes here and there that threatened to disrupt the flow of the battle, but were never going to affect its final outcome. Murray restricts himself, wisely, to speaking English in his post-match on-court interviews. He had said before his match with Ferrer; "I'm going to have to work extremely hard and be very patient and try to dictate the play as much as I can". He was as good as his word out on court today, the third set lacuna notwithstanding, and will have to exhibit the same qualities in spades in his semi-final against Djokovic, which he anticipated with the following comment: "It'll be a tough match and I'll have to come up with a good game plan".
It took the Serb an hour and 7 minutes to win his first set against Rafael Nadal; it took Andy Murray one minute longer to achieve the same feat against David Ferrer. It had taken less time - 65 minutes - for Serena Williams to play an entire match against Sara Errani and set up her semi-final appearance against the number 23 seed Timea Bacsinszky from Switzerland, who beat Alison van Uytvanck form Belgium 6-4, 7-5. Errani played pretty miserably, certainly in comparison to her Fed Cup performance against the American last month, and said afterwards; "I couldn't do what I would like to do. I play too much shorter, too much in the middle. I want to move more the ball, but today I couldn't. So I didn't play my best match, for sure". And to think that she still takes home as much as each of the men's losing quarterfinalists for so much less time and effort expended. You almost don't begrudge Serena Williams taking as much home as a men's winner, because she has a large retinue of admirers to support - there's enough jewellery and bling in the Williams box at a Grand Slam to sink a battleship - and they all have to be catered for, in one way or another.
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David Barnes/Topspin, 2015
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