PARIS – It’s a new season and a different surface, but Leylah Fernandez, still tenacious and still a teenager, is back at the end of another Grand Slam tournament.
He needed all his ingenuity and optimistic energy on this unusually cold Sunday afternoon at Roland Garros.
Amanda Anisimova, a 20-year-old American, 27-year-old, is one of the biggest baptists in women’s tennis, able to generate a phenomenal rhythm with a seemingly casual racket.
This season he has a new model, which has helped him control his easy power. 17th seed Fernández spent almost two hours digging in the corners and throwing himself at the returns, but in the end, the counterpoint beat the puncher 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 with the speed, the consistency and Fernández’s yes-puc. positivity made the small difference as it advanced to its first quarterfinal of the French Open.
“It’s very offensive,” Fernandez said. “I just tried to be as offensive as she was and take a risk, and the balls came in today.”
This is no coincidence at this stage. Fernandez, a 19-year-old Canadian, looks like a great stage player and was perhaps one of the biggest surprises in the history of tennis when she and another headless teenager, Emma Raducanu, advanced to the finals. ‘US Open last year with Raducanu, a qualifier, winning in straight sets.
The rest of the women’s camp has no doubt noticed.
“I’m thinking, especially if the U.S. Open taught us something, that anyone can win any day,” said Coco Gauff, an 18-year-old American who ranks 18th in Roland Garros.
Gauff played one of the best matches on Sunday, defeating No. 31 seed Elise Mertens 6-4, 6-0 to return to the quarterfinals of the French Open, where she lost last year to eventual champion Barbora Krejcikova in a match with errors. Gauff ranks as one of the biggest disappointments of his short career for the way he handled the most significant points.
“I think that was the biggest lesson I learned last year in my quarterfinals,” Gauff said. “I had a couple of seven points, and I think I was scared when some of those points didn’t come out. I’m not scared today. “
Instead, he gained strength and showed greater patience on the beaten track, often participating in lengthy demonstrations with Mertens before going for the winners (or hitting a setback around the net post).
Her work with herself and her new coach, Diego Moyano, seems to be paying dividends, and Gauff will face one of Moyano’s alumni, Sloane Stephens, in an all-American intergenerational duel.
Stephens, 29, is no star this year, but he has long thrived on clay and was a finalist in the 2018 French Open. On Sunday, he beat Jil Teichmann 6-2, 6-2. 0. Stephens defeated Gauff 6-4, 6-2 in the second round of the U.S. Open last year when he first played on the tour. But this was not the first meeting. Both are based in South Florida, and Stephens attended Gauff’s 10th birthday party and first practiced with Gauff when Gauff was 12 and was already planning to face Stephens on much larger stages.
“I’ve had a very competitive mindset since I was little,” Gauff said. “Yeah Al that sounds pretty crap to me, Looks like BT aint for me either.
For those who followed the Cinderella stories in a duel, Fernandez and Raducanu will be linked forever, but even though both were sown here in Paris, they have not gone down parallel paths from New York.
Neither of them has come close to doing the usual route by storm. This has been reserved for a player who is only a little older: the new number 1 Iga Swiatek, who at the age of 20 has won 31 games in a row and remains a banned favorite at Roland Garros, where she herself was champion surprise teenager in 2020.
But while Raducanu has signed a number of major support deals and mixed coaches, he has yet to make it past the quarterfinals of a regular touring event since the U.S. Open. Fernandez has also often lost early, but defended his individual title in Monterrey, Mexico in March and is now making his best career in Paris with a good chance to go further, given that he will face in Italian not a series Martina Trevisan in a rare. quarterfinals between lefties at Roland Garros.
Fernandez said she put too much pressure on herself to succeed after the U.S. Open final.
“I just wanted to be more offensive, more aggressive and improve my game as fast as possible,” he said. “I think I just understood that there is a process, and it is still a long, very long year, and I just need to calm down, calm my mind. And he just accepts that things will be difficult, things will go wrong in a game, in a training session. And just understand that I have more tools in my toolbox that I can use and just find solutions. “
This last sentence seems to have been studying Rafael Nadal’s phrase book, and in fact there is a Christmas touch to Fernández on the track. She is also a quick leftist with an unorthodox technique. Nadal has his bolo-fuet shot to the right; Fernandez has his own extreme grips and often hits the backhand with both hands with his hands apart.
There are also the intangibles: combativeness in the moment; determined walking between points and ingrained rituals. Anisimova might want to write down some notes considering her persistent tendency to be negative. He often grimaced at his mistakes on Sunday, mocking his own shots and throwing his racket through the red clay in frustration at the end of the final set to the sound of a few boos scattered from the stands that were never more than half full on the main track of Chatrier. .
Fernandez seemed a more composed and focused presence. Even if his game was a flickering flame, his commitment was not.
“Every time I go out on the track I still have something to prove,” he said. “I still have this mentality that I’m the disadvantaged. I’m still young. I still have a lot to show people, the public so they can enjoy the tennis match.”