PARIS—“Why,” a fan who had stumbled into the Bullring on Friday might have asked, “is Elina Svitolina seeded No. 4 and Mihaela Buzarnescu seeded 31st?”
All the visible evidence would have pointed this fan toward the opposite conclusion. It was the rail-thin Buzarnescu who was hitting the ball harder, flatter, deeper. It was Buzarnescu who was playing with a whirling abandon, whipping her left-handed forehand with enough sidespin to send Svitolina far off the court in one direction, and then pounding her flat two-handed backhand into the open court in the other direction. Through the course of her 6-3, 7-5 win, Buzarnescu gained leads and gave them back, broke serve and was broken back, but she never stopped forcing the action and forcing her way forward. She finished with 31 winners.
What was Svitolina doing while Buzarnescu was hitting those winners? She was trapped where you don’t want to be trapped in that intimate, circular arena: Running between one line judge and another at the back of the court, trying desperately to return Buzarnescu’s shots anyway she could—slice, hack, block, lob. Worse, though, was what Svitolina did when she finally did have a chance to move forward and take a crack at a ball. As often as not, it seemed, she drove it into the net. She finished with just 11 winners against 29 errors.
So ends Svitolina’s latest, and seemingly best, chance at Grand Slam success. Along with Alexander Zverev on the men’s side, Svitolina has been the game’s poster child for major-event disappointment. Each has won half a dozen titles over the last year and a half and rocketed into the Top 5, but neither has been past the quarterfinals at a Slam. On a day when Zverev had to save a match point to survive a five-set scare from Damir Dzumhur, Svitolina was unable to escape her fate against Buzarnescu.
Match point from Buzarnescu's win over Svitolina in Roland Garros:
