The French Insider #7: Tsitsipas is impressive, Nadal is ready, Kvitova might win it

With the second of the women’s semi-finals pitching Australian Open champion Sofia Kenin against two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova, it is quite possible that this year’s winner could come from that match.

“Especially seeing Petra back, we saw her emotions after winning that quarter final match, and it’s pure joy to see after what she’s been through, and in my opinion she’s one of the players that if she’s on, she’s on fire,” said Paszek, making her debut on French Insider. “There’s hardly any way to stop her, she’s got all the game.

“Sofia Kenin has had an amazing year winning her first grand slam title. Struggled early during the tournament, losing a few sets, but she’s been playing amazing and looking forward to that one.”

Key to winning will be maintaining a high first serve percentage. And, according to Alizé Lim, it’s a reason why women’s tennis is more unpredictable.

“In women’s tennis, the serve is not as stable as the guy’s,” says Lim. “It’s not a strong weapon that they can count on or rely on at any time, so basically in women’s tennis the players can win any point in any game and it puts the women and the WTA players under more emotional pressure, so they have to face emotional pressure every single point. So there tends to be more ups and downs emotionally, which changes the scores and the results”

Mouratoglou “impressed” by Tsitsipas

Taking a particular interest in the men’s semi-finals this year will be Tennis Majors’ own Patrick Mouratoglou, who is in the Stefanos Tsitsipas’ box since the start of the tournament. His charge next faces the big challenge of Novak Djokovic after he dispatched Russia’s Andrey Rublev in the semi-final.

“I was impressed,” said Mouratoglou. First of all it was a difficult match, because Andrey Rublev is dangerous, he’s a great player. He starts to be extremely consistent, he was already in the quarter finals at the US Open and they had history, they played against each other and played against each other several times. Stefanos lost the last encounter just one week before Roland-Garros. He served for the match at 5-3 in the third and ended up losing.

“So there was some kind of negative vibe around this match. That’s always the case when you’ve lost to the opponent and especially when it’s still fresh in your mind. With the level of Rublev it was again a very difficult match and I feel like the first set was the key. Both of the players were a bit nervous at the start and Stefanos got broken first. Rublev was able to keep his serve until the end of the set and the end of the first set completely made his match switch on Stefanos’ side because he ended up breaking back and breaking two times in a row.”