There's that old saw about how defense wins championships. For large chunks of Saturday's women's French Open final, it seemed like that would prove true.
Simona Halep - a speedster, counterpuncher, and tactician - was threatening to run away with the match against young fireballer Jelena Ostapenko, who knows no tactic but non-stop frontal assault. Halep was frustrating Ostapenko by extending points and refusing to make mistakes. Ostapenko overcooked a few shots even when she had half the court to work with.
Halep eschewed risk in favor of consistency, giving herself wide margins, hanging well back behind the baseline, keeping the ball deep, and waiting for Ostapenko to miss. Faced with a significant power disparity, it was hard to argue with that approach. That approach got her to 6-4, 3-0, with a couple chances to go up a double-break in the second set.
The issue for Halep was, her fate was never really in her hands. Even when she was comfortably ahead, the match didn't feel like it was on her racket. Ultimately, the points were Ostapenko's to win or lose. Of the points Halep won in the match, 57 percent were the result of Ostapenko unforced errors.
This pretty much tells the story:
| Player | Winners | Unforced errors |
|---|---|---|
| Ostapenko | 54 | 54 |
| Halep | 8 | 10 |
Even given their contrast in styles, that's a pretty staggering discrepancy. And as the match wore on, the risk began to produce incredible rewards.
Ostapenko devoured Halep's serve - particularly her second serves, on which Halep won just eight points all match - and smacked 13 return winners, most of them backhands down the line. She proved adept at hitting on the move, burning Halep with running forehand winners again and again. She stepped inside the court, took the ball early, and forced Halep to desperately tread water.
"I was just trying to stay aggressive," she said in her on-court interview. "I knew if I'm going to stay aggressive, in a couple of games I'll feel my game and start to play better."
And, though she never took her foot off the gas, Ostapenko did prove adaptable, finding seams to exploit in Halep's defense, and new ways to attack. When Halep looked content to play from the back of the court, Ostapenko started deploying short-angled cross-court backhands that skittered out of reach. She started playing with more patience, using multiple cross-courts to open things up wider and wider before taking the ball up the line. Against a defender like Halep, she ought to have been vulnerable in longer rallies, but Ostapenko won 25 of the 37 points that went five-to-eight shots, and 11 of the 19 that went nine shots or longer (h/t Ben Rothenberg).
Watching her blast away with unshakable moxie, it was easy to forget that Ostapenko was a 20-year-old who'd never won a pro title of any kind before, and who, until this French Open, had never even made the second week at a major. But, as Timea Bacsinszky suggested after losing to her in the semifinals, Ostapenko may be thriving because of - not in spite of - her naivety.
"She's 20 - not afraid of anything," Bacsinszky said. "She doesn't measure maybe what she's doing right now. She probably doesn't care. She's just hitting it the same."
Just Hitting it the Same may as well have been Ostapenko's French Open tag line. No matter the situation, no matter the opponent, she swung from the heels, and believed. She hit a ridiculous 299 winners in the tournament. She had to play a deciding third set in each of her last four matches, each time against a player with at least five more years of experience than her, and thrice after losing the opening set. In those matches, she beat a Grand Slam champ, a former world No. 1, a two-time Slam semifinalist, and Halep, who was playing in her second French Open final and would've been the world's top-ranked player had she won. All this on a clay court, where Ostapenko's power should not be playing up.
Who needs tactics when you can hit the ball like this? Who needs experience when you have this kind of blind confidence?
Ostapenko's talent was apparent well before this incredible run, but in tennis, talent doesn't always win out; there has to be a winning mentality to match. After a fortnight spent cutting some of the WTA's savviest players down to size, it's safe to say she has it in spades.
