Players manage quick continent, surface switch at French Open

Serena Williams bypassed any clay-court tuneup tournaments ahead of the French Open, so her first match at Roland Garros will be her first competition since the U.S. Open.

Naomi Osaka won the U.S. Open and is sitting out the French Open, which starts its 15 days of maindraw action Sunday after being postponed in May because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Dominic Thiem also won the U.S. Open and decided to rest at home for a bit before heading to Paris.

Simona Halep skipped the trip to New York’s hard courts altogether and has been playing exclusively — and extremely well — on clay since tennis resumed after its pandemic hiatus.

Rafael Nadal sat out the U.S. Open, too, but he only has played three matches on his favorite surface in all of 2020, hardly the sort of run-up to Roland Garros the King of Clay is used to.

“A completely special year,” he said after a quarterfinal loss in Rome last week, “and unpredictable year.”

And Novak Djokovic? He traveled to the United States, won the Western & Southern Open and experienced a tumultuous exit from the U.S. Open via disqualification, then flew back halfway around the world and won the Italian Open, which he probably considers perfect preparation for the year’s last Grand Slam tournament.

“Well, it is unusual to be in these kind of circumstances, but at the same time, we are — I am, and I know most of the players are — thankful that we have a chance and opportunity to play and compete and be on the tour,” said Djokovic, who will be seeded No. 1 at the French Open.

He is bidding for a second title there and 18th Grand Slam trophy overall, which would move him within two of Roger Federer’s record for men and one behind second-place Nadal. (Federer is sidelined for the rest of the season after two operations on his right knee.)

“It’s just very close after an exhausting month of tennis in (the) States on a different surface (to) come back and play … on a different surface, different continent,” Djokovic said. “It’s very challenging.”

All players needed to make their own decisions about how to approach this once-in-a-lifetime — let’s hope so, anyway — year and the coronavirus-altered tennis calendar, with the quick switches from North America to Europe and from hard courts to clay that no one is used to managing quite this way.

As Johanna Konta, a three-time Grand Slam semifinalist now ranked 13th, put it: “It is a very different, very strange, very unorthodox kind of miniseason for us.”

With the French Open beginning exactly two weeks after the U.S. Open ended, the hindsight-is-20/ 20 answers to various key questions everyone needed to confront eventually will present themselves on the courts.

“It doesn’t matter how good you are,” said Svetlana Kuznetsova, who skipped the U.S. Open (which she won in 2004) and is entered in the French Open (which she won in 2009). “Nothing replaces match preparation.”