...while a quest that would finally be fulfilled in the decade's latter stages would leave its first official mark on the tournament.
The three-hour final was the first three-set women's championship match in Paris since 2001, with Halep being the first Romanian woman to reach a major final since Virginia Ruzici at RG in 1980. Halep's decade-long quest for glory in Paris truly hit its stride in 2014, as she'd been just 1-3 at Roland Garros prior to her runner-up result. Since the 2013 tournament, Halep had risen from outside the Top 50, winning seven titles and earning a #4 seed in Paris. Four years after her first RG final, in her third try, she'd finally win her maiden major in 2018.
For Sharapova, after falling to Serena Williams in the '13 final, it was a case of returning to her dominant (or at least successfully fighting) clay court form of the decade's middle years. The win over Halep was her 20th consecutive three-set victory on the surface, and her fourth in her last four rounds of play in Paris in '14. The four-match stretch had started in the 4th Round against Samantha Stosur when she rallied from 6-4/4-3, 30/30 down to win nine straight games to defeat the Aussie. In the QF, Garbine Muguruza led 6-1/4-3, but Sharapova won ten of the final twelve games to advance. She then staged another comeback from a set down vs. Genie Bouchard in the semis.
The #1, #2 and #3 seeds all exited the tournament before the Round of 16.
#1 Serena Williams, the defending champ, was upset in the 2nd Round by 20-year old Muguruza (reaching her second straight slam 4th Round as an unseeded player), who'd go on to reach her first slam QF. At 2 & 2, it was Serena's worst slam loss, while Muguruza had previously been 0-7 vs. the Top 8 and never won a set. An increasingly flustered Williams had just eight winners to twenty-nine unforced errors against a Muguruza gameplan which featured many hard shots fired down the middle of the court.
As a child, Serena was Muguruza's favorite player. She admitted after the match that she would watch -- analyze -- her idol's matches on television, then try to emulate her in practice. “Since I was a child, I thought, oh, I want to play against Serena on Center Court. And today was the day, and I think I did very good." Meeting Williams at the net after her biggest career victory, Muguruza said her idol offered her encouragement. “She said that if I continue playing like this, I can win the tournament," she revealed, adding, "I said, I will try. I will try!"
Over the next two years, the Spaniard would reach three slam finals, winning two majors. In 2016, she'd defeat Williams in the RG final to claim her maiden slam crown.
#2 Li Na, the '11 champ, lost in the 1st Round to Kristina Mladenovic, becoming the fourth reigning AO champ to drop her opening match in Paris in the Open era. She was the first to do it since 2000, and just the second in thirty-five years. Li would play just one more slam event (Wimbledon), and announced her retirement in September.
#3 Aga Radwanska was knocked off by Ajla Tomljanovic in the 3rd Round, ending the Pole's streak of seven straight slam Round of 16-or-better results.
Serena's loss was coupled with one by her sister Venus on the same day, just 63 minutes apart. It was the fourth time the siblings had lost on the same day at a major, but the third time it'd happened in Paris. Venus fell in three sets to 19-year old Anna Karolina Schmiedlova, who notched her first career Top 30 win to reach the 3rd Round despite the Slovak never having before won back-to-back MD matches at a tour-level event. Williams had been up a set and a break in the match. It was Venus' ninth straight loss before the 4th Round in a major, a career worst stretch that would reach eleven by the end of 2014.
Said Venus of AKS: "She's going to be even better as she continues to play. I see wonderful things for her."
Almost immediately after losing in Paris, Serena and Caroline Wozniacki, who'd lost in the 1st Round and just had her engagement to golf Rory McIlroy broken, put their troubles behind them in Florida, where they were spotted attending a Miami Heat playoff game.
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Joining Sharapova and Halep in the semifinals were Genie Bouchard and Andrea Petkovic.
Bouchard, 20, would back up her breakout Australian Open semifinal from earlier in the season by defeating Carla Suarez-Navarro in a 7-5 3rd set (after trailing 5-2) in the QF to make it back-to-back major final four results. She lost in three to Sharapova, but a month later would add another slam success: a final at Wimbledon, a first at a major for a Canadian-born woman representing Canada.
After climbing as high as #4 later in 2014, despite a QF in Melbourne in '15, Bouchard had difficulty backing up her career year, as she lost in the 1st Round at RG & Wimbledon. She seemed to regain her form with a Round of 16 run at the U.S. Open, but a lockerroom slip and fall that resulted in a concussion sent her results in reverse, and a lawsuit battle with the USTA over the accident (though Bouchard ultimately prevailed) was a perfect storm of difficulties that has resulted in inconsistency (at best) and a sinking ranking ever since. After a #7 finish in 2014, she hasn't finished another season in the Top 45.
The oft-injury plagued Petkovic defeated Sara Errani 2 & 2 in the QF, becoming the first German to reach the RG semis since Steffi Graf in 1999. It's been Petko's only Round of 16-or-better result at a major since she recorded three slam QF finishes in the 2011 season (and a 4th Round at the '10 U.S. Open).
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Italy's stretch of great results in Paris in the first half of the decade ebbed a bit more in '14, but Sara Errani posted her third straight QF-or-better singles result (a 15-3 run at RG from 2012-14), and she and Roberta Vinci reached their third straight doubles final. A month later they'd complete their Career Doubles Slam with a Wimbledon title run.
2010 champ Francesca Schiavone fell in the 1st Round to Ajla Tomljanovic. It was just her second opening match defeat in Paris in fourteen MD appearances, and her first since 2009. It would turn out to be the first of four such early exits in her last five RG appearances.
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Pauline Parmentier was the surprise Last Pastry Standing in Paris, reaching the Round of 16 in a career best slam result.
In the 1st Round in doubles, Kristina Mladenvoic teamed with Flavia Pennetta to defeat the all-French duo of Alize Cornet & Caroline Garcia. Two years later, Garcia & Mladenovic would form a lethal doubles duo, combining forces to lead France to the Fed Cup final and becoming the first French pair to win the RG WD since 1971.
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Young players making their mark:
* - in her slam debut, 18-year old wild card Taylor Townsend became the youngest U.S. woman to reach the 3rd Round in Paris since 2003 (Ashley Harkleroad)
* - Sloane Stephens reached her third consecutive RG Round of 16 (sixth straight at a major), where she lost to Simona Halep. Four years later, they'd meet for the title with the same result.
* - qualifier Kiki Bertens recorded her first RG MD win en route to her maiden slam Round of 16 result. Up to that point, the 22-year old Dutch woman has been 2-8 in career slam MD matches. Two years later, she's reach her maiden slam SF in Paris.
* - 2013 RG girls champ Belinda Bencic, 17, made her Paris MD debut, losing to Venus Williams, 6-4/6-1. The Swiss teen had led the veteran by a break at 3-2 in the 1st set.
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The 2014 Roland Garros featured the return to grand slam tennis of Switzerland's Timea Bacsinszky. Injuries had led to her essentially being in and out of the sport for much of the 2011-13 seasons (finishing #242-#185-#285 after being between #50-59 from 2008-10), and she had seemed set to move on in life by taking up a career in hotel management. But after beginning to feel healthy again, and after receiving an email in May '13 saying that she was eligible to compete in a Roland Garros qualifier, Bacsinszky took up the offer. She lost her opening match, but had caught the tennis bug once again. With her career revived, she qualified to reach the RG MD in '14, her first at a major since the U.S. Open in 2012, and her 1st Round win over Maryna Zanevska was her first since RG '10.
She'd go on to reach the semifinals in Paris in two of the next three years and rise into the Top 10. In 2015, she led Serena Williams by a set and a break in their SF before losing the final ten games.
Meanwhile, Paris saw the close of the slam singles career of Anabel Medina-Garrigues with her qualifying loss to Tereza Smitkova. It ended the Spaniard's streak of 41 consecutive MD appearances in majors, and left her as one of only two players in WTA history (w/ Anna Smashnova) to have won 10+ singles titles but never reach a slam quarterfinal. AMG played doubles until her retirement in 2018, and has recently worked as a coach and is currently the ESP Fed Cup captain.
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As usual, Svetlana Kuznetsova was involved in an epic singles match in Paris. This time, she won it. In 3:13, the '09 RG champ out-dueled Petra Kvitova, overcoming a 3-1 3rd set deficit and the Czech serving for the match at 5-4 and 7-6. Kuznetsova failed to convert two MP of her own at 6-5, but finally managed to get her first win in four tries vs. Kvitova in a 6-7(3)/6-1/9-7 contest to reach her tenth Round of 16 at RG in eleven years.
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The doubles title was taken by Hsieh Su-wei & Peng Shuai, who defeated three-time finalists Sara Errani & Roberta Vinci to claim their second slam ('13 Wimbledon) as a duo. The pair, friends and oft-doubles partners since childhood, held the #1 ranking for twenty weeks between February and June of 2014, sharing it for one week before RG and then three more after winning the crown.
It would be Hsieh/Peng's last (as of now) of twelve titles together (eight in 2013-14), as the professional partnership that first began in 2008 ended at the close of the '14 season after Peng took issue with Hsieh's supposed lack of commitment to training. They briefly reunited in 2016 and '18, reaching the AO semis and Dubai final in the latter season, but appeared to split for good after sparring on social media over differences regarding the services of a fitness trainer who'd been shared by the two.
Anna-Lena Groenefeld took the mixed doubles crown, her second MX slam win of her career ('09 Wimbledon), with Frenchman Jean-Julien Rojer, defeating Julia Goerges & Nenad Zimonjic in the final.
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Dasha Kasatkina became the first Russian to win the junior title at Roland Garros since 1998 (Nadia Petrova), defeated top-seeded Serb Ivana Jorovic in a three-set final. Her win in Paris gave Russia back-to-back girls slam winners, following up Elizaveta Kulichkova's win in Melbourne. Four years later, Kasatkina would reach her first career QF at a major at Roland Garros en route to breaking into the Top 10 later that year.
In doubles, Romanians Ioana Ducu & Ioana Loredana Rosca came out on top, becoming the first all-ROU pair to take the GD at Roland Garros in twenty-four years. While Rosca has gone on to have a successful career on the ITF circuit, Ducu chose to go another way. After finishing out the '14 season, she gave up the sport to pursue a medical career. In her final two events that fall, Ducu won her lone pro title (a $10K doubles crown in Sharm El Sheikh, along with a singles SF) and another WD final (and singles QF) at the site a week later.
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Japan's Yui Kamiji, 20, won her first wheelchair singles slam crown, defeating three former/future slam winners -- Jordanne Whiley, Jiske Griffioen and Aniek Van Koot -- in order en route to the title. Kamiji would sweep the RG titles, joining with Whiley to defeat Griffioen/Van Koot in the doubles final. She and Whiley would win a Doubles Grand Slam in '14, taking all four majors as well as the year-ending Masters event. In all, the pair won seven straight slam/Masters WC titles from 2013-15.
Kamiji, who had become the new wheelchair #1 in May, also won the U.S. Open singles later that summer and ended the '14 season holding six of the seven slam crowns in the sport, only missing the Australian Open singles (she was RU). By the end of the decade, Kamiji had risen to second place on the all-time career slam s/d titles list (w/ 20 heading into the '19 RG), behind only Esther Vergeer.
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FASHION REPORT: Aga's (short-lived) run in her flower dress deserved better...
Venus' effort didn't hang around for very long, either...
Said Jelena Jankovic of *her* dress: "I think it's very French. I love it."
Meanwhile, we all know the Romanian fans travel well. But they also coordinate their wardrobe...
We can't stop the arrival of the future, nor can we rewrite the events of the past. And over the last two weeks in Paris, no one could find a way to stop Maria Sharapova at Roland Garros, either. Not the older, nor the younger. Not one player's destiny, nor the impatience of another to experience ultimate grand slam success, could divert the 27-year old Russian from once again -- for a fifth time -- having the tournament of a lifetime.
Try as she might -- and she did try with all she had at her disposal, managing to come closer to succeeding than any other woman over the past two weeks -- Romania's Simona Halep could not grasp Sharapova by the ankle and pull her back down to earth as she was in the process of once again rising above her opponent, the crowd and the court just as this year's women's singles final reached a critical stage in the deciding set. Lifting her game to a different level at the most crucial moment yet again, Sharapova emerged with a 6-4/6-7(5)/6-4 victory in a three-hour battle against a 22-year old who was appearing in the first major final of her career. After the first three-set RG final in thirteen years, nine-time slam finalist Sharapova offered up the judgment that it was the "toughest grand slam final" in which she'd ever played.
No one dared argue with her verdict, either.
Sharapova served wide on match point, and Halep couldn't keep her return inside the lines.
Moving toward the net on the point, Sharapova saw the ball land out. After having shouted her lungs out all week celebrating her accomplishments, this time she quietly -- almost daintily -- dropped her racket and fell to her knees, covering her face with her hands and burying it in her lap. Though surely most people had, at least on some level, expected to possibly see this moment on the final weekend of this Roland Garros, Sharapova obviously wasn't one of them.
But that's what makes Sharapova such a great champion, isn't it? She takes nothing for granted. She didn't when she won her first slam crown as a 17-year old at Wimbledon nearly ten years ago. She didn't today when she became the first Russian player -- male or female -- to win the same slam more than once. And if reaches this same moment again in the future, she won't then, either.
Of course, being who she is, quiet will never do. After shaking Halep's hand, the still-wound-up Sharapova fell to her knees a second time, this time with her racket in hand... and she celebrated in far less quiet manner.
Sharapova, after so many people -- few of them REALLY paying attention -- have openly wondered why someone with so much going on in her lucrative off-court life would choose to put herself through so much training in order to continue to play tennis, did her level best at this tournament to prove precisely why she does so. The best competitor in the world of tennis loves the sport. And she loves to win. Everything that goes into making that happen as often as possible is just part of the process.
Left by her injured and/or upset generational contemporaries to block the door being charged by the army of NextGen would-be-stars looking to make a name for themselves, Sharapova personally eliminated twentysomethings Garbine Muguruza, Genie Bouchard and Halep -- all in three-setters -- in her final three matches at this slam. She might have taught them all a few things about what it'll take to become a real champion one day, too. Not to mention to still be able to call themselves that a full decade later.
It's been quite a career that Sharapova has put together. And, really, it's a testament to her -- both the teenage and current versions -- that she's been able to do it. She's always seemed different from the rest, equally capable of being both a superstar AND a champion. All these years after everyone first saw such traits in her, she's been all that and, as she's often shown, quite a bit more, too.
* - "I think doesn't matter who plays today against me, I always lose the match today, because I don't think she was put a lot of pressure from me." "I think today just I gave it away for the match." "Nobody say if you are #2 in the world, you have to win all the matches." - Li Na, after her loss to Kristina Mladenovic
* - "I have a couple words to describe it, but I think that would be really inappropriate, so I’m going to leave it at that." - Serena Williams, after her loss to Garbine Muguruza
* - "Before I felt very small. But today I thought, I’m not going to feel very small." - Garbine Muguruza, after upsetting Serena Williams
* - "Best friend on tour, I don’t have one. I don’t think the tennis tour is the place to have friends. For me, it’s all competition. And I think it’s important to just remember that we’re going to play against each other. It’s not like we’re teammates. To me, it’s kind of more competitive." - Genie Bouchard
* - "It's great sometimes to get knocked down because you have to get back up. I love getting back up. I love the challenge." - Serena Williams
* - "I will not forget this match." - Simona Halep, after losing the final
* - "If somebody had told me... at some stage in my career, that I'd have more Roland Garros titles than any other grand slam, I'd probably go get drunk. Or tell them to get drunk. One or the other." - Maria Sharapova
* - "It says that she's very fit. It says that she's very determined. And it says that she never gives up." - Sharapova coach Sven Groenefeld
* - "You're not just born being a natural clay court player. OK, maybe if you're Nadal. But certainly not me. I didn't grow up on it; didn't play on it. I just took it upon myself to make myself better on it."" - Maria Sharapova
