Unseeded Ostapenko, 20, wins 1st title
PARIS (AP) – Right from the start of the French Open final, Jelena Ostapenko made quite clear to anyone unfamiliar with her name, or her game, what she is all about.
Yes, she was just two days past her 20th birthday. Yes, she was ranked only 47th. Yes, she was trying to become the first unseeded women’s champion at the tournament since – get this – 1933. And yes, she was trying to become the first woman in nearly four decades to make a Grand Slam title the first tour-level triumph of her career. None of that mattered to Ostapenko.
She began what would become an enthralling, 2hour encounter by breaking No. 3-seeded Simona Halep at love with a series of grip-it-and-rip-it shots, eliciting loud, appreciative gasps from spectators. So what if Ostapenko wound up dropping that set, then facing big deficits in the second and third? Ostapenko never wavered, using bold strokes and an unbending will to come back and stun Halep 4-6, 64, 6-3 for an unlikely championship at Roland Garros.
“Before the match, 5-10 minutes, I was a little bit nervous,” said Ostapenko, the first Latvian to win a major. “But then, when I went on court, I felt quite free.”
Halep, a 25-year-old from Romania, was the 2014 French Open runner-up and would have moved up to No. 1 in the WTA rankings if she had won Saturday.
“I’ve been sick in the stomach with emotion,” Halep said. “Maybe I was not ready to win it.”
Ostapenko was playing in only her eighth Grand Slam tournament and never had been past the third round before. Clay isn’t even her preferred surface – she likes grass better, and won the Wimbledon junior title in 2014 – which made this two-week joyride even more unpredictable.
Consider: Last year in Paris, Ostapenko lost in the first round. The year before that, she lost in the first round of qualifying.
“Everybody knows she can play very good, but I think nobody expected (her) to (do) what she did,” said Anabel Medina Garrigues, who began coaching Ostapenko in April.