Power play
Newcomer Ostapenko muscles her way to French Open championship
PARIS — Jelena Ostapenko’s first love was ballroom dancing — but judging by the bruising way she demolished Simona Halep to win the French Open on Saturday, it might just as well have been boxing.
The 20-year-old Latvian muscled 54 winners past Halep, ranked No 4 in the world, who was so shellshocked by her 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 loss that the Romanian said she felt “sick to the stomach”.
Much was made of Ostapenko’s love of the dance floor at Roland Garros, where her guarded relationship with the media was at odds with her free spirit on the court.
She fired 299 winners during the tournament, the most by any player of either sex, in a breathless and refreshing departure from the usual defensive mundanity of the women’s tour.
But it wasn’t all about power. There’s grace in her brutal hitting, and her steady footwork is testimony to her balance and quick feet in the ballroom.
“At home in Riga I try and go ballroom dancing four times a week,” she said.
“It really helps with the footwork on the court. My favorite dance? The samba, of course.”
Ostapenko said she did ballroom dancing for seven years as a child then took a break for another seven years before dusting off the sequins again in 2014.
“I have the dress, the shoes — everything has to be matching. I go to a club and dance with a professional dancer.”
In Latvia, Jelena is better known as ‘Alona’, and that is the name she uses among friends and family.
But names are tightly regulated in Latvia and while ‘Alona’ does not appear on the official list of legally acceptable names, Jelena does, and so that is the name she uses in order to avoid paperwork confusion on the world tour.
Her father, Jevgenijs Ostapenko, was a goalkeeper with Ukrainian soccer club Metalurh Zaporizhya. Her mother, Jelena Jakovleva, is a tennis coach.
Ostapenko’s early years in tennis weren’t easy as her family scrambled for the money to finance her career.
“We had to find a few different sources of revenue — via the internet, doing a few different jobs, using our savings, said Jevgenijs.
“But we found enough mon- ey. Luckily, two generous benefactors appeared who gave us funding and asked to remain anonymous.”
But it paid off with his daughter winning junior Wimbledon in 2014.
Money will no longer be a problem for either Ostapenko or her family. Her championship victory was worth over $2 million.
That, however, might not be enough to turn Ostapenko’s head.
She does not have a Twitter account, and such was her low-key nature before Saturday that when she reached the final, Latvian President Raimonds Vejonis had to congratulate her through her mother.
“The president actually called my mom. That’s what she told me. I mean, because nobody knows my phone number,” she said.