Heather Watson has accomplished a great deal on her first trip to Roland Garros as an adult. She won three matches to become the first British woman to qualify for the French Open since 1994, and as a result of her first-round victory will be ranked inside the Top 100 and the British No. 2 next week—which is not the dubious honour it is among the men. All these things are great accomplishments. But probably nothing is further from the mind of the 19-year-old girl who was in tears after leaving Court 3, where she was comprehensively beaten by 16th seed Kaia Kanepi.
Kanepi and Watson were both junior Grand Slam champions, Watson at the 2009 U.S. Open and Kanepi 10 years ago at Roland Garros, where she beat Svetlana Kuznetsova and Dinara Safina on her way to the junior title. If her pro career has not been quite so stellar, she’s reached the quarterfinals at Wimbledon (2010), the U.S. Open (2010) and here in Paris (2008). Her adult career has taken its time in coming together and she is still prone to radical ups and downs and injury struggles, but she was several classes above Watson today, breaking serve in the first game and not looking back until she was a victor at 6-1, 6-3, in little over an hour. One of the heaviest hitters in women’s tennis, Kanepi handled everything Watson could throw at her with relative, ease and there is no way to obfuscate or deny that fact.
This loss is a rude awakening for Watson, but a necessary one for her future development. She knows now, painfully and at first hand, that there is simply not enough on her groundstrokes to trouble a player of Kanepi’s quality and that she must find a way to incorporate more of the power she can generate in practice into her match game. There were plenty of encouraging signs, however; she was willing to let go of her counterpuncher’s mentality, open her shoulders and hit big shots of her own. She has that ability, and the struggle will be to develop it when she can win matches against many opponents without needing to use it. Finding a full-time coach will help there, but not as much as time and experience.
It’s difficult to tell from this match what we can expect from Kanepi going forward. Her movement will always be a problem and if Watson, with her currently limited range, can exploit that her forehand side, then it will be easier for future opponents to do so. But she has a nice draw, facing Ekaterina Makarova (who beat Johanna Larsson today) next, and her weight of shot matches up against any woman on tour. I wouldn’t necessarily bet against seeing her in the quarterfinals in Paris again, but it’s hard to see her going much further.
—Hannah Wilks