Stunner in Paris

“Anything can happen”: We hear those words a lot in sports, but they haven’t come true very often in tennis in recent years. This season, in which the Top 4 men split the four majors and the Top 3 women did the same, was the least chaotic in recent memory. Then there was this match.

Virginie Razzano’s 4-6, 7-6 (5), 6-3 win over Serena Williams in the first round of the French Open is my 10th best match of 2012 (I'll be counting down the rest each day for the next two weeks). It was also one of the biggest upsets of the Open era. Serena was 46-0 in Grand Slam first rounds for her career, and she came to Paris seemingly with her best chance to win at Roland Garros in years. She had won two clay-season warm-up events, in Charleston and Madrid.

The 29-year-old Razzano was ranked No. 111, and would end the year No. 161. She would lose her next match in Paris, in straight sets to Arantxa Rus, go out in the first round of Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, and finish the season playing Challengers in Poitiers and Nantes—those are technically in the same country as Roland Garros, but not in the same universe. Razzano’s name isn’t even listed on the WTA’s website at the moment. Meanwhile, the woman she beat would lose just one more time all season, while going on to win Wimbledon, two Olympic gold medals, the U.S. Open, and the WTA Championships.

Did this match, you could be forgiven for asking now, really happen? Yes, it did. And while it’s hard to tell from the third-set highlights above, it made for one of the wildest and least believable tennis scenes I’ve witnessed in person. Here are a few thoughts on re-seeing five minutes of it on YouTube, with commentating, apparently, courtesy of Dinara Safina.

—We don’t see it here, but the most stunning moment of the match is already over. Serena was up a set and 5-1 in the second-set tiebreaker. She hadn’t been blowing Razzano out, by any means; the Frenchwoman’s ranking was low, but she had beaten top players in the past, including Serena’s sister Venus. Despite being two points from defeat, she had played Serena pretty fearlessly. As you can see in the clip above, she doesn’t back away from the baseline.

Still, at 5-1 in the breaker, on what was up to that point an exceptionally dull day of tennis, most of us in the press room only had one eye on this match. Which is what we used to see Serena do something she had rarely done in her career, but which she would admit to doing again this season: Panic.

She hit a backhand into the net. She hit another one long. Then she watched a ball from her opponent float onto the baseline, and didn’t swing at all. Here’s what I wrote at the time about what happened next:

"Another missed backhand was followed by a wild forehand wide. Serena’s eyes were wide as she struggled to do what she’s done in all 46 of her previous first-round Grand Slam matches—close. Razzano’s eyes were also wide, wide with possibility. She had stayed with a below-par Williams for most of two sets, and refused to go away when everyone expected her to, at the end of the second. Now this native of France, who has been ranked as high as No. 16, but who had lost in the first round in five of the last six French Opens, saw a chance. She took it, coming forward at set point and forcing one more error from a reeling Serena. The dullest day had just taken a turn into uncharted territory.

**

—“I made a lot of errors,” Serena said afterward. “I mean, the whole match, I just didn’t play the way I’ve been practicing. I don’t know how many errors I ended up making”—it was 47— “but I haven’t been playing like that in the past.”

By “the past,” Serena meant the recent past. It was my belief at the time that the reason she lost this match was that coming into Roland Garros this year, she had higher expectations for herself than normal. Serena always expects to win, of course, but this time, with the way she had been playing on clay in the spring, a French title looked like a serious possibility—she was the favorite. When she suddenly didn’t find herself playing the same way she had over the previous two months, Serena got tight. I wrote this at the time:

“Note that when Serena started the match poorly today, she became outwardly angry, something she hadn’t done more than once or twice this clay season. Williams had never lost a first-round match in 14 years of playing the majors, but that doesn’t mean they’re not nerve-wracking. Today Serena, who admitted to being nervous, finally couldn’t close one out.”

**

—It’s hard to tell from this clip, but the third set had it all. There were fans banging on chairs. There were the heads of the French Federation on the edges of their seats. There was defiance from Serena and grit from Razzano. The Frenchwoman fought nerves and cramps and two hindrance calls from chair umpire Eva Asderaki. She saved five break points and won it on her eighth match point. Razzano made the evening historic, but it was Serena's presence and stubbornness that made it dramatic.

—Afterward, a glowing Razzano said it was “the most beautiful match of my life,” that it was an “honor” to beat Serena, and that it was a “big enjoy” for her. By the end of the final game, two men in front of me in Chatrier had their caps pulled over their eyes—they weren’t fans of either player, but they couldn’t bring themselves to look as Razzano tossed the ball to serve. The crowd beat time on the seats and did a rolling disco-style chant. Oracene Williams urged her daughter on, as Serena dropped her racquet in exasperation and was booed. Any shot that looked like it had a chance to be a winner brought a loud exclamation from the crowd—now that was a hindrance.

It ended with a perfect dramatic triangle: Razzano joyful over a ball mark that she knew was out; Serena walking to the net to inspect; and the nemesis of both players, Eva Asderaki, who had been nearly whistled out of the stadium, confirming the end with her index finger. The chant kept going rolling around the stadium as Razzano, who had lost her fiancé to brain cancer last year, sat with her head in her hands.

“I wanted to give myself the chance of winning it,” she said later, claiming that out of the bad she had made something good. “I went as far as I could, and I think I won it as a champion.”

—Did Serena learn from this match? It’s possible. In both the Wimbledon and U.S. Open finals, she would say that she panicked. But, unlike in this match, where she went down 0-5 in the third, she didn’t let herself get too far behind in those finals, and she didn’t try for the huge winners that she went for here.

—This is how I finished my write-up that night:

"Part riot, part parade, part venture into uncharted territory, this was a match where a champion for an evening held off a champion for all time: Virginie Razzano couldn't go any farther than she did tonight. She gave us an image of tennis persistence that will endure."

Steve Tignor's Top 10 Matches of 2012:

No. 1:The Miracle on Grass: Lukas Rosol d. Rafael Nadal

        No. 2: <em>The Struggle Down Under:</em> Novak Djokovic d. Rafael Nadal  

        No. 3: <em>Olympian Efforts:</em> Roger Federer d. Juan Martin del Potro  

        No. 4: <em>Wooing Them:</em> Victoria Azarenka d. Sam Stosur  

        No. 5: <em>Tightrope Walk Across Paris:</em> Novak Djokovic d. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga  

        No. 6: <em>Winning Like It's 1999:</em> Serena Williams d. Victoria Azarenka  

        No. 7: <em>Fireworks:</em> Rafael Nadal d. Roger Federer  

        No. 8: <em>Sturm and Drang:</em> Angelique Kerber d. Sabine Lisicki  

        No. 9: <em>Sculpting a Strange Masterpiece:</em> Bernard Tomic d. Alexandr Dolgopolov<em>*  

No. 10: Stunner in Paris:* Virginie Razzano d. Serena Williams