Virginie Razzano has confirmed that she will still play the French Open, even after the death of her fiancé, Stephane Vidal, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor nine years ago, and died on Monday, May 16.
Razzano told Tuesday’s edition of L’Equipe newspaper that 32 year-old Vidal asked her to play at the French Open, and that is why she will play. “Four or five days ago, I asked him: ‘Do you want me to go and play at Roland Garros?’,” Razzano said. “He answered: ‘Yes, you need to play.’ Because his intention is that I keep on going in my life, that I play for him and that I continue to be strong and to fight.”
“The most beautiful thing we achieved in our lives was not a match,” Razzano said. “We were a couple, but we became one person.”
Razzano added she had a “very difficult adolescence” before she met Vidal.
“It’s hard, but thanks to the strength he gave me I’m still alive,” Razzano said.
May Stephane rest in peace, and best of luck to Virginie at the French Open and in life.
French federation of tennis announced today that Serena Williams withdraw from the Roland Garros. The little Williams sister don’t play an official match since she won Wimbledon in july because of a foot injury caused with a glass, but this is not the only injury for Serena Williams.
At the begin of 2011 she had a blood clots in her lung and she said that this was her scariest moment of her life. She will be replaced by the japanes player Junri Namigata.
Bernard Tomic and Casey Dellacqua are the two lucky Australians who will receive wildcards into this years French Open maindraw. These wildcards are given out as a reciprocal agreement between the Australian and French Tennis Federations.
It will be very interesting to see if Tomic (only 18 years old) can grab some success on the clay at Roland Garros. While Dellacqua has been on the comeback after a year full of injuries.
At this years French Open there will be a lot of female players with great opportunities to impress, but it still seems that the Australian men aren’t holding up their end of the bargain.
Here is a quick round up of the Finals scores of the French Open. So many players had the tournaments of their lives, but the real standout performance has to be Rafael Nadal yet again!
Mens Singles Final: Rafael Nadal (ESP) bt. Robin Soderling (SWE) = 6-4 6-2 6-4
Samantha Stosur to play Francesca Schiavone is the French Open Womens singles final. I didnt want to run through the matches and the results again, Im sure you already know! If not check out the French Open website.
Novak Djokovic just couldnt believe he could be up two sets to love against Jurgen Melzer, but find a way to lose the match in 5 stes. The Austrian to his credit played some great tennis and hung in there, eventually winning the match 3-6 2-6 6-2 7-6 6-4.
Sam Stosur has just done it again! After playing one of the matches of her life to beat Justine Henin, she has now backed it up and knocked out Serena Williams in the French Open yesterday. Sam won 6-2 6-7 8-6.
Sam hit 30 winners against 24 errors, 6 aces and won 58% of the points when she had to thrown down a second delivery.
What annoys me is that Sam is a friend and she forgot to mention that before the tournament she was 125-1 to win the tournament with the bookies, so I missed out big time!
Well in my previous post this morning I thought Justine Henin and Samantha Stosur would have the match of the day, and I was right! Stosur knocked out Henin 2-6 6-1 6-4.
This is a great win for Samantha, but it doesnt get any easier with Serena Williams in the next round. Stosur has been playing some of the best tennis of her career and the results are starting to flood in!
Its good to see the Aussie’s doing well, now if we only had a few male players to back up the women’s results!
Im really looking forward to the match today between Justine Henin and Samantha Stosur. I used to know Sam very well while playing tennis back home in Australia (we are both Queenslanders). It has been amazing how much progress she has made in this past year, moving from just a doubles player to now really competing and winning in singles.
Justine has this to say about Sam and her game after defeating Maria Sharapova:
She has beautiful qualities on clay because she plays kind of a men’s tennis. I mean, she has very heavy balls.
Andy Murray didnt have any answers yesterday for Tomas Berdych. Tomas seems to always be in control and his movement was great around court. Tomas won 6-4 7-5 6-3. Before the match you just knew that Berdych would get off to a great start and he just seemed really up for the match, plus its a great time to get Murray (windy at the French Open). I think the above picture explained the match very well!
Camille Pin has announced her retirement from professional tennis after a 12 year career.
Pin’s last match was a first round doubles loss at the French Open. Pin, who never won a title on the WTA Tour, said “it’s a very special day for me, because it’s such a tough decision.”
Pin had mainly focused on doubles lately, having reached a career-high singles ranking of 61st in 2007. She was not entered in the singles draw at Roland Garros.
Tennis is a very difficult sport to make a solid living from, especially if you are hovering around 100 or 200 in the world in doubles.
Roger Federer talks to the Tennis Channel at the French Open. It’s interesting to hear Roger’s response as he weighs in which is more important. 16 slams, 23 consecutive semi-finals, or the weeks at number one record.
The story of yesterdays French Open has to be the great performance by Kimiko Date Krumm. The 39 year old Krumm as 1-4 down in the final set with a leg injury and somehow came back to beat Dinara Safina. She became the second-oldest woman to win a match at Roland Garros in the Open Era after Virginia Wade in 1985. Awesome.
She knew, as we all did watching, that her Russian foe was feeling the moment:
“I didn’t want to stop,” Date Krumm said. “My condition was very bad, but she was getting a little nervous, and she started making mistakes. So I tried many things, like drop shots and hitting wider, slower… and she kept making mistakes. I tried everything.”
Dinara is having a lot of problems with her game at the moment, and since her split with coach Zeljko Krajan her game can only get better. Im pretty sure it cant get any worse!
American qualifier Michael Yani’s French Open debut lasted one match. It felt like about two or three.
Yani lost to Lukas Lacko of Slovakia 4-6, 7-6 (5), 7-6 (4), 6-7 (5), 12-10 in a marathon that began Sunday and finished Monday, covering 4 hours, 56 minutes of playing time. The 71 games equal the most in a singles match at the tournament since tiebreakers were instituted in 1973.
“Ridiculous,” Yani said, cracking open a can of caffeine-rich soda. “I’ve never gotten to a fifth set before, so, I mean, that was pretty cool, I’m not going to lie—to go that deep into a fifth.”
He sighed, before adding: “I wish I could have closed it out.”
The 29-year-old player based in Durham, N.C., fell to 0-7 in tour-level matches for his career. He had his chances this time, with three match points in the fifth set: two Sunday at 6-5, then one Monday at 10-9. Lacko also wasted his own opportunities along the way, with four match points way back in the fourth set.
“I knew I would have (more) chances,” Lacko said. “It was a question of time.”
Well, quite a long time.
Three other men’s singles matches at Roland Garros also lasted 71 games. The overall record is the 83 games played in a match in 1957.
When a contest lasts that long, Yani explained, “You don’t really know what’s going on out there. You’re just sort of going through the motions, and let instinct take over.”
Play was suspended Sunday night because of darkness, with the score 8-8 in the fifth set.
“I thought it was going to be difficult, and I thought I was going to be a little nervous, have a hard time going to sleep and waking up,” Yani said. “But I was so tired last night, I just passed out. I hit the bed, and—boom!— gone. And I woke up, and I was so tired and so sore.”
When they resumed Monday afternoon, the score progressed to 10-10, when Lacko (pronounced LECH-ko) broke Yani’s serve for the only time the entire match.
Yani actually had managed to break Lacko’s serve in the very first game— and then never again. Lacko saved the last 13 break points he faced.
“I definitely thought about that along the way,” Yani said. “I kept looking at the scoreboard … and I’m sitting there, going, ‘How are we both not getting broken at all?’ He served unbelievably well on the break points. I felt like every time I had one, he popped in a good first serve. So, credit to him.”
Neither the 151st-ranked Yani nor the 81st-ranked Lacko had played in the French Open’s main draw. Lacko’s reward for working the tennis equivalent of overtime? He will play 11th-seeded Mikhail Youzhny of Russia in the second round.
“I will be ready, for sure,” Lacko said, between bites of a chocolate bar.
The Tennis Channel will be offering free live and on-demand broadband streams, with over 125 matches and 200 hours of play during the first 10 days for the French Open.
Visitors to the network’s site, www.tennischannel.com, will be able to view any one of five courts for the first eight days of the event, followed by a single court on days nine and ten.
ESPN3.com – will deliver more than 270 hours live from the three primary courts at Roland Garros on the days ESPN2 is televising — Sunday, May 23, plus Tuesday, May 25 – Friday, May 28 and Monday, May 31 – Thursday, June 3.
Don’t count defending champion Roger Federer and four-time winner Justine Henin among fans of a proposal to hold the French Open outside Paris beginning in 2016.
Gilbert Ysern, general director of the French tennis federation, told a news conference Saturday relocating the clay-court Grand Slam from Roland Garros is being considered because it needs more space to remain competitive with the three other major tournaments.
Three options are being examined, including one next to Versailles castle. Another possible site is near Disneyland Paris.
The French Open has been at Roland Garros since 1928 and the federation has a contract there till 2015. The French federation assembly is expected to make its decision in February.
“I think by the time I finish my career, the tournament will still be at Roland Garros,” Federer said. “I don’t know if the French Open will one day move to Disney, I doubt it. There is more space outside the city, I understand, but come on …”
Henin accepted that space is an issue at Roland Garros, but said its tradition is one of the French Open’s main assets.
“I hope they find a solution to keep the tournament here,” she said. “The tradition is here. This is my favourite tournament. Maybe (a move outside Paris) will happen.
“You need to be realistic. Compared to other Grand Slam tournaments, which are always getting bigger, it has become difficult in terms of space. Everyone knows that.”
Among the Grand Slam tournaments, only the French Open and Wimbledon have never been moved. While Wimbledon has been updated, facilities at Roland Garros have become outdated. The lack of space for 450,000 annual spectators, players, journalists and sponsors is a problem, while the absence of covered courts leaves the tournament vulnerable to the weather.
“We have to create the Roland Garros of 2040,” French federation vice-president Bernard Giudicelli said. “We will do everything to make sure that Roland Garros 2016 will be played in a bigger and modernized stadium.”
The French Open’s facilities are spread over 21 acres (8.5 hectares), while Melbourne Park — the site of the Australian Open — and Wimbledon each have 49 acres (20 hectares). Flushing Meadows, site of the U.S. Open, has 34.5 acres (14 hectares).
“Some players told us they cannot imagine leaving Paris,” Ysern said. “But if we stay, we have to modernize the facilities to aim for excellency. We need more space and a retractable roof over the centre court.”
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga said there is only one Roland Garros.
“I would prefer to stay here and make the tournament bigger here because this site is wonderful,” Tsonga said.
If the tournament stays in Paris, three adjoining areas will be added to Roland Garros at a cost of about US$251 million. Building a new stadium outside Paris would cost an estimated $754 million.
Versailles castle is 20 kilometres from downtown Paris. Disneyland Paris in Marne-La-Vallee is 48 kilometres from the French capital.
Should the tournament be relocated, preliminary designs envision a 74-acre (30 hectares) site with 55 tennis courts — two with a retractable roof — that would be able to receive up to 60,000 people a day.
