Amidst the gloom of another chilly, rainy day at Roland Garros, a very thrilled and very excited Italian lit up the afternoon.
The joy was there for all to see as Francesca Schiavone finally broke the quarterfinal barrier at a Grand Slam at the age of 29. And, in doing so, she became the first Italian woman to reach the semifinal of any Grand Slam since the advent of the Open era in 1968.
The Milanese played a brilliant match Tuesday to eliminate the No. 3 seed Caroline Wozniacki 6-2, 6-3, and so — after 38 previous attempts — made it through to the last four, having fallen one round short on three previous occasions.
How did she feel? “Heart attack!” she replied. “Not easy to explain in English. The emotion is the greatest pleasure. I think it is coming really from inside because when you work a lot, hard every morning, every afternoon of your life and is arriving at a good result, I think for me it is really something special. It is your space, your time, your opportunity. I felt alone but with all the love all around me.”
The smile said it all. Schiavone has been a stalwart of the Italian Fed Cup team for many years but has never made her mark before at the Grand Slam level despite reaching a high ranking of No. 11 in January 2006. She is now ranked No. 17 on the WTA computer, but she played above that level today.
Mixing it up and attacking at every opportunity, the Italian was in her comfort zone on clay and it showed.
“She played well, she played with a lot of spin,” Wozniacki said afterwards. “She didn’t make a lot of mistakes but she played aggressive.”
There wasn’t a moment when Schiavone did not dominate the match against the 19-year-old Dane who made a surprise appearance in the U.S. Open final last September. Whether she will be able to dominate at all against Elena Dementieva, a rival since their junior days, in the semifinal is a very different matter.
The Russian came through a desperate encounter on Court Suzanne Lenglen against her compatriot Nadia Petrova, 2-6, 6-2, 6-0 and admitted that it was very hard for both players.
“I think probably this is the most difficult performance since I played my first time to get to the semifinals,” said Dementieva, who was a finalist here and at the U.S. Open in 2004 and a semifinalist at Wimbledon in 2008 and 2009. “I think the weather condition was quite tough for everyone here during these two weeks. It was a difficult challenge to win this match against Nadia. I think we were both struggling a little bit with injuries. It has been very cold and windy and sometimes there is no time to warm up.”
Dementieva, in fact, left the court to have a leg injury attended to at one point and Petrova, who was playing with a thigh strapped said, “I asked the chair umpire if it’s possible for me to just go away, too, because I don’t want to be under the rain and cold but she kept me on court.”
Question for the Grand Slam committee: Is that fair? If one player is warm in the locker room getting treatment, why should her opponent have to suffer in the elements?
Anyway, Elena’s treatment obviously helped but, as usual, it was her indomitable fighting spirit that got her back into the match and in the end Petrova had nothing left to offer. It was their 15th meeting as professionals. And now the score stands at 8-7 tot Dementieva.
Dementieva, who says that she loves Paris and prefers Roland Garros to any other tournament on the tour, is all too aware that she is still searching for that elusive Grand Slam title.
“For sure it’s on my mind,” she admitted. “This is one of the biggest goals left in my career. This is a great motivation for me. But you cannot think about it too much. This is a two-week competition and anything can happen to you. Let’s see if I can handle this challenge.”
Soderling too much for Federer
Every bit as much as losing his French Open crown, Roger Federer will be feeling the loss of a record he cherished as much as any that will go into the history books — his extraordinary feat of having made at least the semifinals of the previous 23 consecutive Grand Slams in which he had played.
Players, past and present, are agape at that achievement. But now it has come to an end after Tuesday's four-set loss to Robin Soderling. It ended, not because of any great waning of Federer’s powers but because one match last year lifted a journeyman pro out of a nine-year rut in which he had gained a reputation as just an indoor, fast-court player and turned him into a top quality performer.
Soderling pounced on a rare moment of weakness on the part of an ailing Rafael Nadal and beat him in the round of 16 of these championships 12 months ago and roared on to reach his first Grand Slam final. And even though he lost that final in four sets to Federer, he has been a different player ever since.
It’s all psychological, of course. Certainly Magnus Norman, who was a finalist at the French Open himself in 2000, has made a major impact since he began working with his fellow Swede in November 2008, but the fact remains that the victory over Nadal on what, previously Soderling regarded as his least favorite surface, opened a window in the mind.
“I realized what I could achieve,” he said. And today he proved it by ending one of the most one-sided head-to-head contests existing on the tour these days — a 12-0 defecit against Federer.
A year ago, after losing to the Swiss — which he did again at the U.S. Open — Soderling told us, “I can’t play him. He takes my game away. I’m fast but he’s faster. He’s just too quick for me.”
Not any more. This dank, frequently interrupted evening was all about power rather than touch, speed and lightness of foot. Soderling has always had the power — on the serve, off the forehand — but Federer has always been able to rush him into error. This time the odds shifted in the Swede’s favor and, armed by that newfound confidence that has seen his ranking rise to No. 7 in the world, he was able to achieve a lifetime’s ambition and beat Roger Federer.
For the world No. 1 — who may lose that ranking if Nadal regains his title — this was a lousy evening to lose a crown he had come by so unexpectedly. He had lost his Wimbledon title to Nadal in virtual darkness at Wimbledon in 2008 and now, again, the elements conspired against him.
Federer is a soul for the sunlight while Soderling, whose countenance suggests a man who is used to dark northern nights, was always likely to prosper in conditions like these. Although the match was over before 8:00 p.m. local time, the hour had already closed in on the game’s great prince.
