An open field for women

Tennis French Open

Asked last Sunday if she believed that she is the French Open favourite, Simona Halep dissented. “No, no,” she said. “In this moment, no.”

Who is, then?

“About 15 players,” she said, smiling.

Sixth-seeded Halep, of Romania, had just lost the Italian Open final to eighth-seeded Elina Svitolina of Ukraine, 6-4, 5-7, 1-6, the latest in a series of results in women’s tennis this year that have shown uncertainty about who can be relied upon to contend for the biggest titles.

Halep, who won earlier this month in Madrid and reached the Stuttgart semifinals, has been the most common answer in recent weeks, even if said with minimal confidence. Though Halep is a light, graceful mover on clay, where her counterpunching game is at its most effective, her mental toughness is sometimes questioned. An ankle injury at the Italian Open has further set her back.

Halep is often sullen and frustrated on court, and her coach, Darren Cahill, stopped working with her for five weeks after a particularly uninspiring midmatch coaching visit in Miami, in which Halep repeatedly appeared to throw in the towel before a third set.

“I was ashamed, and also upset, with myself when I watched it,” Halep said in an interview last week. “I felt very bad, personally, inside. So I said I had to stop it.”

Cahill left the door open for his return, and Halep won him back with impressive play at Fed Cup and Stuttgart.

The two reunited in Madrid, where Halep successfully defended her title with a renewed commitment to positivity on the court. 

“I’m really motivated to not disappoint him again,” she said. “I just want to do this also for myself, because I don’t lose as much energy and I feel fresh after I finish a match. It’s a big difference. But the main reason is to be OK on the court because I love what I’m doing. I have to show that I love it, not that I hate it. Sometimes, I show too much negativity, and I act like I don’t want to be there. But the only place I want to be is there.”

Halep’s momentum continued this week in Rome until she rolled her right ankle in the eighth game of the first set against Svitolina. Though she was able to compete well through the second set, she played cautiously in the final set, which went quickly.

Though she figures to be back at full strength in Paris, Halep has been far from bankable at major tournaments. After reaching the final of the French Open in 2014, Halep has suffered early losses in her subsequent two appearances in Paris, falling in the second round in 2015 and the fourth round last year. In her most recent Grand Slam event, she lost in the first round of the Australian Open.

Even with that stained résumé, tennis analyst Pam Shriver said, Halep still sits atop the pile of current candidates for the position of French Open favourite.

“There’s no pattern — it’s a free-for-all,” Shriver said. “This isn’t just going to be the French Open — this appears to be what it’s going to feel like the rest of the year.”

Several top players are not competing in Paris.

Second-ranked Serena Williams, who won the first major title of the year at the Australian Open in January, is pregnant and will miss the rest of this season. Former No 1 Victoria Azarenka of Belarus is also still out on maternity leave, planning to return to the tour later this summer.

Even with her eligibility to play in the event uncertain, Maria Sharapova of Russia had a brief stint last month as the oddsmakers’ favorite to win the French Open after she won the first three matches of her comeback from a 15-month ban for testing positive for meldonium (she was ultimately not granted the wild card she needed to enter the tournament).

The most obvious options still competing also cause hesitation. Top-ranked Angelique Kerber of Germany has struggled to back up her breakout performance last season and has yet to beat a top-20 opponent this year.

Svitolina, the champion in Rome, also won a tournament in Dubai in February and is the leader in the year-to-date rankings. But she has made the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam only once, and she has lost before that stage at this year’s four biggest tournaments (the Australian Open, Indian Wells, Miami and Madrid).

Current players agree with Shriver’s sentiment that there is no use predicting women’s tennis right now. Seventh-ranked Garbiñe Muguruza of Spain, last year’s French Open champion, expressed relief after winning her third-round match in Rome against Julia Gorges of Germany, who is ranked 45th.

“All these girls are kind of at a similar level,” Muguruza said. “There is nobody that I feel right now that is much better than the other ones.”

Muguruza cited Williams’ departure as the origin of the uncertainty.

“You were thinking, ‘I have to beat Serena to win a Grand Slam,'” Muguruza said. “But now it’s more like, ‘I don’t know.’ Surprise after surprise.”

Veteran Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, 35, of Croatia, expressed confidence that some sort of order would be restored, eventually. “There was tennis after Steffi Graf; there will be tennis after Serena, and after other big players,” Lucic-Baroni said. “There are a lot of new ones, a lot of new potentials. At the moment, not one is dominating, but I don’t see that as a bad thing.”

Lucic-Baroni said she was wary about any possible state of play in women’s tennis being skewed negatively.

“People will complain about the sunny skies, you know?” she said. “If there is one that dominates? Well, then, it’s boring because she wins everything. If there is one that isn’t dominating? Well, women’s tennis sucks at the moment. I don’t see it as that. There are a lot of great players.”