Whoops! I forgot to actually do a review of the men's and ladies final of this year's French open, well that's pretty embarrassing! And I guess we all know the results now but for the sake of this post I will quickly go over the matches.
LADIES FINAL
Simona Halep vs Jelena Ostapenko
Well, this match was quite an intriguing one, which saw the two women go after their first grand slam title with Simona having been in this position before three years previously at Roland Garros only to lose out to Maria Sharapova in three close sets. Jelena on the other hand had never won a title going into this tournament and this was her fourth career final having lost her first three.
The match itself proved to be quite a thriller as both players engaged in a real tight battle that saw momentum swings to and fro between them. And the 1st set breaks aplenty with Ostapenko fearlessly breaking Halep to move ahead, only for Halep to break back and after this more breaks followed but in the end, Ostapenko go for broke tennis caused too many errors as she lost the 1st set. The 2nd set was more of the same from Ostapenko as she went a break down with victory in sight for Halep. However, the young firey Latvian was not to be outdone as she fought her way back into the match and broke back and then went on to level the match to a set all. In the 3rd set, momentum swung to and fro again but in the end, against all the odds, it was youth that triumphed over experienced again as Ostapenk broke Halep twice to seal her first tour title and major title at that with an incredible 4-6, 6-4, 6-3.
This was a great match with a very surprising result given that Halep was tipped as the heavy favourite to win the match, however not as many people were counting on the fearless aggressive play of Ostapenko, who played the match of her career in the final. And Ostapenko deserves nothing but credit for her ability to have fought through to the final and defy the odds to go on and win her first title, which just happened to be a grand slam! And on the results seen here, you could only imagine that Jelena will go on to the grass courts with a very strong chance to do well at Wimbledon.
As for Halep there is no doubt she would be disappointed but she was also very gracious in defeat and congratulated the young Ostapenko and said to keep it up as she is "just a kid" and Halep went on to say how she felt maybe she wasn't ready to have won the title. However, I'm sure Simona will have her chances for more slams in the future.
MEN'S FINAL
Rafael Nadal vs Stan Wawrinka
So, now onto the men's final, which saw the 9 time French open champ, Rafa take on the 2015 champion, Stan Wawrinka in a battle of the wits to see who would claim the trophy. Going into this match Rafa had never lost a final at Roland Garros and Stan had never lost a grand slam final, so this promised to be a very interesting one.
However....in the end the match turned out to be nothing more than an exhibition for Rafa's skill and ability to manoevuer his way around a clay court and more specifically around his favourite court of all, Court Philippe Chatrier as he ruthlessly dominated Stan from the very beginning. And in the 1st set, Rafa showed his ruthless efficiency as he bossed Stan and pushed him from pillar to post, which the Swiss player go down a double break and lose the opener. The 2nd was more of the same stuff as Stan was forced to go for more on his shots, which lead to more unforced errors and Rafa broke to take a swift two set lead. And in the 3rd set, Rafa finally broke Stan's spirit as he succombed to another double break that saw Rafa breeze his way to a remarkable 10th French open title with an emphatic 6-2, 6-3, 6-1 victory.
Well, this match had everything in Rafa's favour from the get-go given his perfect record in French open finals and his virtually perfect performance in the tournament up to this point, it would have been impossible to have bet against him. And it remains a tremendous achievement for Rafa to have won 10 French open titles and surely that is a feat that will never ever be repeated again in history.
As for Stan, well there was no doubt that this was a deeply disappointing result having lost so easily to Rafa as he often over-pressed his shots, trying to end a rally quickly by going for a winner and making a ton of errors in the process. I would also imagine that Stan's epic semi final match with Andy Murray would have taken it out him quite a bit, so this also left him at a disadvantage although I think the result would have been the same no matter how fresh would have been. Regardless of this though it did show that Stan had put together a strong finish to his clay court season, which similar to Andy's had been pretty up and down.
Right, so that's us up to date and I will be back soon with my Wimbledon preview for my pick of the contenders for the men's title.
So, see you soon...
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