QUALIFIER CONTINUES UNLIKELY RUN
Martina Trevisan has been doing video chats from her hotel room with her mental coach every day along the way to the quarterfinals at Roland Garros, a run the 159th-ranked qualifier acknowledges is “a little” shocking, just not as much to her as to everyone else.
So after Trevisan’s 6-4, 6-4 victory against No. 5 seed Kiki Bertens at Court Suzanne Lenglen on Sunday, which was just as out-of-nowhere at this out-of-nowhere French Open as Iga Swiatek’s 6-1, 6-2 win against 2018 champion and No. 1 seed Simona Halep over at Court Philippe Chatrier, the 26year-old from Florence, Italy, planned to stick to the routine.
It’s helped her for the past two years, not merely the past two weeks, which also featured unexpected wins over Coco Gauff and 20thseeded Maria Sakkari.
Trevisan’s tennis coach, Matteo Catarsi, described one of the goals of the sessions with Florida-based Lorenzo Beltrame, whose clientele also includes threetime major semifinalist Johanna Konta, this way: “Not to feel uncomfortable in this environment, like someone who played in Grand Slam qualifying, but to feel like a queen, like a star.”
Trevisan and Beltrame chat. He gives her writing assignments. She works to find the right words to describe her thoughts and buttress her self-belief. The exercise is important for where Trevisan is these days, in her sport and in her life.
It’s been quite a journey, one Trevisan said hopes offers others this message: “Don’t ever give up, even in the toughest moments, where it really feels like life wants the worst for you, like it doesn’t care about you at all. Stay strong and seek the light. Because there is light there, and it will arrive.”
A decade ago, shortly after turning 16 but beset by the pressure of others’ expectations, promising prospect Trevisan quit tennis, which her mother teaches and her brother played professionally (her father was a pro soccer player).
She had anorexia, an experience and recovery she discussed in detail in a blog post two months ago.
“I hated my muscular body and I lost weight by adopting a diet that was just enough to survive,” Trevisan wrote, saying she eventually sought help and “re-learned how to eat and to make peace with my wounds and to appreciate my new body.”
While Rafael Nadal overwhelmed qualifier Sebastian
Korda 6-1, 6-1, 6-2 and U.S. Open champion Dominic Thiem held off French wildcard entry Hugo Gaston 6-4, 6-4, 5-7, 3-6, 6-3, the unpredictable outcomes kept arriving at Roland Garros in the fourth round.
U.S. Open runner-up Alexander Zverev lost 6-3, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 to 19-year-old Jannik Sinner of Italy, then said he had a fever and was short of breath, two symptoms that raise red flags during a coronavirus pandemic.
Sinner is the first man to reach the quarterfinals in his debut in Paris since — yes, you guessed it — Nadal 15 years ago and now faces the 12-time champion. Thiem, runner-up to the King of Clay the past two years, plays No. 12 seed Diego Schwartzman, a 6-1, 6-3, 6-4 winner against Lorenzo Sonego.
In the other women’s matches, No. 3 Elina Svitolina beat Caroline Garcia 6-1, 6-3 and next takes on Nadia Podoroska, a qualifier from Argentina who is ranked 131st and eliminated Barbora Krejcikova 2-6, 6-2, 6-3.
Like Trevisan, Podoroska never had won a Grand Slam match until this event.