By John Huston
PARIS—Vika Azarenka entered Roland Garros with a question mark by her name. This spring, stormy Vika won the Sunshine Double – Indian Wells and Miami – and appeared ready to reclaim her mantle as Serena’s chief competitor. But clay has never been Azarenka’s best surface, and her season on the red dirt leading into Paris was underwhelming. Was she nursing a back injury, or playing it safe?
The answer came in Vika’s 6-3, 6-7 (6), 4-0 retirement loss in the first round to Italy’s Karin Knapp, a match marked by Azarenka’s array of grimaces, and eventually some tears in the third set as the Italian – who’d blinked when trying to close out the match in the second set – began to race ahead in the scoreline. Knapp has clay ability, and she gave Maria Sharapova a notorious scare in scorching Australian heat a few years back, but if Azarenka’s game had been firing on all cylinders, the match should have been hers.
It wasn’t. Instead, Azarenka found herself at the mercy of Knapp’s at times powerful game, and she called the trainer for a knee injury in the second set, having lost five straight games in the first. At this point Vika’s health woes have become a major part of the story of her career. As she rose up the WTA rankings, like Novak Djokovic, she seemed susceptible to wilting in the heat. She was carried off one year at the US Open. More recently, her fitness has varied, and a foot ailment forced her to have to rebuild her ranking. Though she retired against Knapp, many observers felt she shouldn’t have stayed on court as long as she did.
Can Vika regain, and more importantly sustain, the physicality of a top 10 player? That question – a key one for the women’s game, since Maria Sharapova’s fate remains in doubt – remains unanswered in the wake of her early exit in Paris. She skipped her required post-match press conference.
TURKISH DELIGHT: Turkey had a breakthrough at the French Open, with its first players in the women’s main draw. Yes, that’s plural – Cagla Buyukakcay and Ipek Soylu both made it through qualifying. Soylu fell in the first round to France’s onetime Serena-shocker Virginie Razzano, while Buyukakcay made it to the second round before losing to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. Marsel Ilhan also competed in the men’s singles.
THE NAME GAME: Both Julia Goerges and Myrtille Georges won their first-round matches. After defeating a Herbert (Pierre Herbert), teen sensation Alexander Zverev now faces a Robert (Stephane Robert). France’s Tessah Andrianjafitrimo was double-bageled in the first round, which means the umpire never had to announce, “Jeu, Mademoiselle Andrianjafitrimo.”
OSAKA IT TO ME: One might not have expected clay to reward teen Naomi Osaka’s big-hitting game, but the Japanese teen with character to spare is into the third round in Paris. Her appearance on the other side of the net will be a relief to sixth seed and 2014 finalist Simona Halep. It means Halep doesn’t have to play Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, who has twice straight-setted Halep at Slams, and whom Osaka beat on Wednesday. With personality to spare, Osaka – who first made waves at 2014’s Bank of the West Classic in Stanford – is making her second third-round appearance at a Slam this year.
