The French Open ended today with the two champions, for the men Rafael Nadal and for the women Jelena Ostapenko being as close to polar opposites as one could find in sport excluding their status as champions and that they made tennis history. Nadal dispatched Stan Wawrinka in three straight sets 6-2, 6-3, and 6-1 to win his first French Open since 2014, and his record tenth overall (no other man has more than six French Open titles in the Open Era). Ostapenko, on the other hand, is a fresh-faced 20-year-old, who became the first unranked woman since Mima Jousovec in 1983 (she lost to seven-time winner Chris Evert) to reach the French Open Final. More importantly she became the first unranked woman to win on the fabled clay courts of Stade Roland Garros in the Open Era (beginning in 1968) although Margaret Scriven did in 1933, when the tournament was considered “amateur” which in layman’s terms means the athletes competed weren’t technically allowed to be paid to compete.
Another difference between our two champions is that Nadal encountered little resistance at his home away from home while facing Wawrinka, who like many before him found the Spaniard to be as his nickname proclaims “King of Clay”. Ostapenko, by comparison, looked mortal at first when she lost her first set 4-6 to Simona Halep, the Number 3 ranked woman in the world, before winning set number two 6-4, and then claiming the title with a dramatic 6-3 win in the final set in which she had been down 1-3 (for those wondering, women go to three sets while men go to five). Halep previously had lost the French Open Final to Maria Sharapova in 2014, which was prior to the later’s ban for performance enhancing drugs. Despite the fact that Ostapenko started this tournament as a teenager (having her 20th birthday over the course of it) she is not the youngest woman to win with several winners being as young as 16. This does not take away from her accomplishment. As for Nadal there is not much else to say other than his success on clay is well-documented, expected by his opponents, and statistically ridiculous. His win-loss record at Roland Garros was improved today to an insane 79-2 which is 97.5%. For both Nadal and Ostapenko, however, the victory will be shortlived as it is widely expected that both (barring major injury) will participate at this year’s Wimbledon which begins July 3rd.
