Stephens earns shot at crown
PARIS — When the French Open final was played a year ago, Sloane Stephens was nowhere near Roland Garros. She was in Chicago with coach Kamau Murray, working her way back from a foot injury that required surgery and sidelined her for 11 months.
“Indoors on a hard court. Getting ready for grass. Barely walking. Playing tennis next to a bunch of 5- and 6-year-old screaming kids,” Murray recalled. “So to be here from there, I think, is rewarding, because those times were not easy.”
The times are good now. Stephens closed in on her second Grand Slam title by beating pal Madison Keys 6-4, 6-4 yesterday in the first all-American semifinal at the French Open since 2002. It also was a rematch of the U.S. Open final won by Stephens last September.
“It’s always hard playing someone from your country and such a good friend,” Stephens said, “so I was really pleased to be able to get through that and play some good tennis.”
The 10th-seeded Stephens’ opponent in tomorrow’s final will be Simona Halep, who emphatically ended the impressive French Open run of 2016 champion Garbine Muguruza by defeating her 6-1, 6-4.
Halep, who assured herself of retaining the No. 1 ranking with the victory, earned a fourth chance to win her first major title.
She twice has lost in the final at Roland Garros — to Maria Sharapova in 2014 and to Jelena Ostapenko in 2017 — and was the runnerup to Caroline Wozniacki at the Australian Open in January.
“I lost three times until now and no one died,” Halep said, “so it will be OK.”
Muguruza, a two-time major champion, entered the semifinals having not lost a set in the tournament. She also was coming off a lopsided victory in the quarterfinals a day earlier, overwhelming Sharapova 6-2, 6-1.
But it took Muguruza quite a while to get going against Halep, who managed to keep sending ball after ball back over the net.
Backed by fans who loudly chanted her first name between games, Halep went ahead 3-0 with the help of only one winner. Of her first 14 points, 13 arrived via errors by Muguruza — nine unforced, four forced.
It was 5-0 by the time Muguruza eventually claimed a game.
Muguruza’s last stand came at 4-all in the second set, a 13-minute game in which she held three break points. But she failed to convert any of those, and Halep held there, before breaking at love to end it.
While the Romanian sometimes has trouble with so much on the line, Stephens has been perfect in title matches on the WTA tour, going 6-0.
“I mean, there is no formula. I didn’t, like, try to do it. I’m not trying to break a record. It’s just how it’s happened for me,” Stephens said, “I think once I get going in a tournament, I’m pretty consistent, which is good. I just try to keep that going.”
Like Halep, Stephens is an incredibly talented defensive player, and she kept stretching points until Keys would err. In all, Keys made 41 unforced errors, 30 more than Stephens.
On the men’s side, Rafael Nadal and Juan Martin del Potro advanced by winning quarterfinals suspended the night before because of rain. The No. 1-ranked Nadal quickly announced yesterday that he was not going to be as passive as he was in the early going against 11th-seeded Diego Schwartzman, seizing 12 of the initial 13 points after they stepped out under a blue sky and pulling away for a 4-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 victory at Court Philippe Chatrier.
“Totally different guy yesterday,” Schwartzman said. “Maybe the day when you can beat Rafa was yesterday.”
Across the way at Court Suzanne Lenglen, No.5 del Potro got distracted by a spectator right before a key double-fault, then marched over toward the stands to try to figure out who it was.
Otherwise, he stayed steady in a 7-6 (5), 5-7, 6-3, 7-5 win over No. 3 Marin Cilic in a matchup between two past U.S. Open champions, returning to the semis in Paris for the first time since 2009.
Now comes what del Potro called “the challenge that every player wants to have” — taking on Nadal at Roland Garros. The 32-year-old Spaniard is 84-2 for his career at the French Open, winning four consecutive titles from 2005-08, another five consecutive from 2010-14, and No. 10 a year ago.
Broaden the scope to all best-of-five-set matches on red clay, and his record is 109-2.
And yet, insists Nadal: “I just go on court knowing that every match is difficult, and I can lose and I can win.”