I know what you’re thinking: How can a straight-set match, in which one of the players failed to rise to anything near her best, be No. 1 for 2010? And it’s true, the French Open women’s final didn’t have the surreal grandeur of Isner-Mahut, and it wasn’t a display of back-and-forth shot-making and drama along the lines of Nadal-Murray in London. But there are many reasons to watch tennis, and just as many reasons to love it. I can only say that this was my favorite match of the year, the one I enjoyed watching the most, and the one that, to my surprise, meant the most to me.
I had a friend in high school who owned a tape of the 1983 French final, won by Yannick Noah. If we wanted to feel better on a dreary weekend afternoon, we would put on the final set, where Noah whips himself and the crowd into near hysteria. I could see myself in the future doing the same thing with the second-set tiebreaker of this final, where Francesca Schiavone seizes the moment and seems to take flight above the court, before ending the match laid out flat on it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find the tiebreaker anywhere on YouTube. How is that possible? The best I could do was this brief but sweet set of Italian clips. Hopefully, it’s enough to bring back the inspiration of that afternoon. (There's also this crowd film, which looks as much like an assassination as a tennis match.)
I watched Schiavone-Stosur at my tennis club in Brooklyn. I was taping it at home, but I stood with about 20 other members through the tiebreaker anyway. How could you turn away? With each point, the cheers and appreciative laughter around the TV grew—Schiavone had us, even those of us who had never heard her name before. When she won the final point, everyone raised their arms, as if one of our New York home teams had just won a world championship. (Of course, there’s a fair amount of Italian spoken and heard in my section of Brooklyn, which didn’t hurt.)
Maybe it’s OK that there are no points to analyze here. It’s Christmas Eve for many of us, not exactly a time for Xs and Os. But I’ll try to re-create the day by cribbing from what I wrote the day after the final:
One moment can stand in for the entire match, and the way Schiavone went after it. Up 5-2 in the second-set tiebreaker, she was two points from winning what she had to believe, as a 29-year-old who had never cracked the Top 10, would be her only shot at a major. Or at least I thought she had to believe this. I’d been waiting, through the second set and particularly through the tiebreaker that ended it, for her to remember this fact and tighten up accordingly. But she didn't tighten up. Instead, she loosened up and played her most assertive tennis in the breaker.
At 5-2, I thought now, now, finally, the weight of the moment would land on Schiavone’s racquet and make it just a little harder to swing so freely. From a tactical perspective, it might even have made sense to play a little safer against an erratic Sam Stosur; there’s no shame in inching across the finish line. But that wasn’t how it was going to be for Francesca—no backing in, no inching across the line today. On the next point, she took an even bigger cut on her backhand return, ran around and drilled a forehand into the corner, and finished it with a sweet and difficult shoe-top backhand volley that was angled perfectly. From the start, Schiavone had taken Stosur’s biggest weapon, her serve, and managed to get on top of it and attack it like no one else had all tournament. From the start, she had taken this match; there was no other way for her to end it.
No, actually, there was. Along with that 5-2 point, I’ll remember one line from her classic, classy acceptance speech. “I’ve always watched every final of this tournament and I know what the big champions say. I want to thank everybody.” Even after her win, Schiavone was humble and honest enough to differentiate herself from the “big champions.” In one sense, she was right; she’s not Serena Williams or Steffi Graf or Justine Henin. But she’s also wrong. Schiavone showed that, in the right time and place, there can be a big champion in any of us. She showed, by winning the way she did, that opportunities can be taken. Hers is a win I’m going to want to remember.
Six months later, I remember. Six months later, it still feels good. Grazie to you, Francesca.