Off the mark
Konta finally breaks her Paris duck
Edmund hung in there and raised his level in the superb final set
Nothing has been simple on the tennis court for Kyle Edmund this year, and his first-round match at the French Open was no exception. Edmund will have to come back today to complete this feisty tussle with Frenchman Jeremy Chardy, which was boiling up into a classic when the darkening skies forced play to be suspended.
The match was scheduled on Court No1 – the notoriously intense “Bullring”, which will sadly be demolished after this tournament – and Chardy brought his home fans to a pitch of high excitement. He kept falling behind and then finding a new surge of energy, just when it seemed that Edmund might be about to end his winless streak.
By the time Edmund took the court, one British hoodoo had already been broken at Roland Garros, with Johanna Konta seeing off German qualifier Antonia Lottner to score her first main-draw victory at the French Open.
Konta was coming in on a run of four straight defeats here, whereas Edmund’s crisis is more recent: five losses in a row through his recent tournaments in Marrakesh, Monte Carlo, Munich, Madrid and Rome.
Edmund’s story has not been one of consistent poor play, even if you roll back through the whole claycourt swing. Instead, he has found it impossible to close out matches, butchering winning positions in at least two of those tournaments. And that same struggle to pull himself over the finish line seemed to be a factor again yesterday.
Edmund made a superb start, using his blazing forehand to break serve in the first game, and finding the lines consistently off both wings. He knows Chardy’s game well, as the Frenchman lives in London and they practised together at Queen’s Club for a week late last month. So when Edmund spoke to reporters during his pre-tournament press conference last Friday, he accurately predicted what he was about to face.
“It’s dangerous in terms of the power he has with his serve and his forehand,” said Edmund. “He’s going to be hot sometimes. Sometimes he’s going to be cold. It’s how you manage that [because] if you let him get the momentum, it can really stay with him. It’s a really nice match, presuming we get a nice court, especially with him being French.”
Chardy certainly did play in streaks yesterday. He was a break down in each of the first three sets, before levelling each time. He also turned in a phenomenal serving performance that included 30 aces – the highest figure in the tournament at this early stage.
To Edmund’s credit, he hung in the battle, and raised his own level in a magnificent final set. The fact that he could find such intensity after 3½ hours was encouraging in itself, for there had been suspicions before this event – especially after his capitulations against Diego Schwartzman in Monte Carlo and Fernando Verdasco in Rome – that his stamina might be suspect.
But Chardy was equally intent on holding his ground, and there was no sign of either man giving way when supervisor Andreas Egli arrived on the court to suspend proceedings with the score reading 7-6, 5-7, 6-4, 4-6, 5-5 (Edmund first) and the match clock showing 3hr 55min.
As the players packed their bags at 9.23pm, it certainly felt like a long time since Konta had broken her Roland Garros duck. This was a professional performance against a lowly ranked but dangerous opponent. Lottner might stand only just inside the world’s top 150, but she had not dropped a set in qualifying and also took out Belinda Bencic – one of the form players of the season – in Lugano last month.
“It’s nice to have won a maindraw match here,” Konta said after closing out a 6-4, 6-4 victory in 1hr 19min. “But I have never doubted my ability on the surface. It is human nature to have doubts and negative thoughts, and there was a lot of time to think, or overthink. But I did a good job of not doing that.”
Konta’s next opponent – America’s 5ft 2in battler Lauren Davis – will offer a complete contrast of styles to Lottner’s languid, freeswinging game. But Davis does not have much pedigree here either. Even after beating Kristyna Pliskova in straight sets yesterday, her French Open record stands at two wins from eight matches.