This French Open hasn’t looked like a Grand Slam women’s championship since the first couple of rounds.
At first glance, the final four players looked more like a low-level WTA Tour tournament semifinal field with only one top 30 player still around. And now Saturday’s final features No. 32-ranked Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia against No. 33-ranked Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic.
They aren’t household names yet.
The setting is pretty gloomy on the surface for the same court that will play host to maybe the most important and most intriguing meeting of the Rafa Nadal-Novak Djokovic long-running rivalry.
FROM OBSCURITY TO GRAND SLAM SINGLES CHAMPION
But there’s more to this women’s final than you might expect, considering the participants and their obscurity until the last few weeks.
Especially in the case of Krejcikova.
This 25-year-old who had never been heard from in singles until she won the WTA tournament in Strasbourg, France, the week before the French Open. She is a former world’s No. 1 doubles player, but as neat to watch as doubles are, doubles rankings are rather insignificant to the average tennis fan.
Not everyone keeps up with the doubles rankings except the players at/or near the top of the list.
Just the same, Krejcikova and long-time doubles partner Katerina Siniakova are in the French Open doubles semifinals. The pair won French Open and Wimbledon doubles titles back-to-back in 2018. They also teamed up as juniors to win three of the four junior Grand Slams in doubles — French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. Krejcikova also has been part of the last three title-winning Australian Open mixed doubles teams.
KREJCIKOVA MASTER OF BACKHAND DOWN THE LINE
But watching Krejcikova score victories over 17-year-old want-to-be superstar Cori Gauff in the quarterfinals and then 25-year-old Greek Maria Sakkari in the semifinals was spine-tingling, keeping you on the edge of your seat. Ranked at No. 18 currently, Sakkari was the only top 30 player still playing when the semifinals rolled around.
Krejcikova can turn the simplest-looking shot into a nightmare. She is totally unpredictable . . . until the match is on the line. Then she often becomes sheer perfection. Her backhand down the line is one of the best-kept secrets in women’s tennis.
She treats the lob as a weapon, playing moon-ball tennis at times to get her opponent out of sync. And the tactic worked numerous times down the stretch in her amazing 7-5, 4-6, 9-7 win over Sakkari on Thursday.
CZECH STANDOUT WINS MATCH TWICE
The 5-9 Czech player had to win the match twice in the last game. That was the result of the chair umpire ruling on match point No. 4 that Sakkari had hit a winner, over-ruling Hawkeye and then ordering the point to be played over. Sakkari then won that point and the next one in a show of aggressiveness to move within one point of evening the score at 8-8.
But Sakkari then committed a pair of errors to give Krejcikova a fifth match point. This time, the Czech turned a Sakkari drop shot into a Krejcikova winner, naturally a backhand down the line, to complete the match in 198 minutes.
Of course, Krejcikova had to fight off one match point herself in the 10th game of the final set before evening the set at 5-5 by winning a moon-ball battle with one of her backhand winners.
WOMEN’S DRAW FELL APART EARLY
Among current top 10 players, 2020 French Open champion Iga Swiatek was the lone member left in the field before she lost to Sakkari in the quarterfinals. And Swiatek, Serena Williams and Sofia Kenin were the only top 10 players around for the round of 16.
With 1-2-3 Ashleigh Barty, Naomi Osaka and Simon Halep falling to injuries or personal decisions in the case of Osaka, the women’s draw started to fall apart by the second round and never let up.
All of that opened the doors for Krejcikova and Pavlyuchenkova to compete for the prize of their lifetimes Saturday morning on the red clay of Roland Garros.
See James Beck’s Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier columns at postandcourier.com (search on James Beck column). James Beck can be reached at Jamesbecktennis@gmail.com.