On Their Heels

Every team sport in North America has a regular season and a playoff. And each has a catchphrase that describes what a team needs to do when it makes the shift from one to the other.

Pitching, they say, is the key in baseball’s post-season. Defense wins Super Bowls and NBA championships. Goalies win Stanley Cups. These are the things you need when you absolutely must have a win.

In tennis, tour events are the equivalent of the regular season, and the Grand Slams are our four-times-a-year playoffs. What do the players need most at the big events, when their opponents are at their fittest and most focused? On the women’s side in recent years, there have been two answers: Size and power. Since the start of 2010, these women have won major titles: Serena Williams (8), Maria Sharapova (2), Kim Clijsters (2), Victoria Azarenka (2), Li Na (2), Petra Kvitova (2), Sam Stosur (1), and Marion Bartoli (1). Of those, all except Bartoli are physically imposing players who can create their own winners from anywhere on the court.

This thought came to my mind twice over the last two days, first during No. 6 seed Eugenie Bouchard’s straight-set loss to Kristina Mladenovic on Tuesday, and again during No. 3 seed Simona Halep’s straight-set loss to Mirjana Lucic-Baroni on Wednesday. There was a sense of déjà vu about the two matches. Each was played on Court Suzanne Lenglen, each of the losers was a breakout young player from 2014, and each lost to a tall and rangy blonde—Mladenovic is 6’0”, Lucic-Baroni 5’11”—who let the ball rip as soon as possible. Superior size and power, rather than speed or consistency or experience or any other traditional tennis player's asset, was what won the day.

Of course, there was more to each of these matches than that. Bouchard has been in a well-publicized slump for most of 2015. The same woman who reached the semifinals or better at three majors in 2014 is just 3-10 since the Australian Open. Yesterday, in what she characterized as a low point in her young career, the 21-year-old looked lost on court and sounded just as lost in the interview room afterward.

“Honestly, I don’t know what to say,” was how she opened her press conference, before closing with an equally grim view of the year ahead. “I have no expectations for the foreseeable future.” Credit Bouchard for not trying to paper over her predicament.

Mladenovic hit 24 winners to Bouchard’s 19, and tried 15 drop shots, as counted by Canadian journalist and longtime Bouchard observer Tom Tebbutt. The Frenchwoman, who is without a coach, still managed to create and execute a perfect game plan for beating Bouchard, which might be summed up as “not letting your opponent do what she likes to do.” In the past, it has been Bouchard who has been the relentless aggressor, but Mladenovic never gave her the chance.

This is a problem with success: Your opponents watch you, get to know your strengths and weaknesses, and make a plan to beat you. As far as how Bouchard herself is playing, the difference from last year appears to be part mental and part physical. As Tebbutt mentioned in his write-up on the match, other reporters have suggested to him in Paris that “they think Bouchard is looking thin and doesn’t have the same muscle tone as when she was at her best.” Watching the match, I had the same thought, and wondered if, in a quest to be lighter and faster, she has lost some pop on her shots.

Psychologically, Tebbutt cited two forehand misses at crucial stages that Bouchard almost certainly would have made when she was riding high in 2014. It’s in those moments, when the match is close and she hesitates, that all of her recent defeats make themselves felt.

“I do think that when I’m playing my best tennis is when I’m being more instinctive,” Bouchard said. “I think that’s something I need to get back, just trusting myself because I know I can play well.”

Halep, on the other hand, has not been in a slump. She did lose to Lucic-Baroni last year at the U.S. Open, but few expected a repeat of that result at Roland Garros, a tournament Halep nearly won in 2014. Lucic-Baroni is ranked No. 70, has lost eight first-round matches this year, and was coming off a disastrous defeat to Madison Keys in Strasbourg, in a match that she led 6-4, 5-0. But like Mladenovic, she had little trouble dictating the rallies with her long-levered ground strokes. Halep is six inches shorter than Lucic-Baroni, and it looked like she was playing uphill the whole way today.

She didn't appear ready to make the climb. As journalist Ravi Ubha pointed out after the match, Halep's last four losses at majors have all been in straight sets, and three of the second-set scores were 6-2, 6-0, and 6-1. Like another fatalistic all-world athlete of the past, Kim Clijsters, Halep has a tendency to speed the proceedings up and rush herself off the court in frustration when things don’t go her way. Today she finished with just five winners to Lucic-Baroni’s 27.

“She started to hit the ball very strong at the beginning of the match,” Halep said.

That brings us back to what works at the Grand Slams. In 2014, Halep and Bouchard shot up the rankings together and played some of their best tennis at the majors—the Romanian made the French Open final, the Canadian did the same at Wimbledon.  We’ll see them do well at the Slams again; Bouchard, who is in much worse shape than Halep at the moment, is still just 21.

Yet it will probably never be a smooth or easy ride for them at these tournaments. As talented and determined as Halep and Bouchard are, neither is a towering figure—Bouchard is 5’10”, Halep is listed at 5’6”—and neither can blast her way out of trouble the way the women who have won Grand Slams in recent years can. Each relies on combinations of shots to win points, and that left them vulnerable in Paris to taller players who had nothing to lose and an incentive to get in the first strike.

Halep and Bouchard can do a lot with their racquets, and they will in the future. But when they get to the majors—tennis's playoffs—they also need to be able to take their opponents' racquets out of their hands.