[Brian Swartz]

2040 French Open

On tap this year, Bjorn Benda is the presumed runaway favorite as two-time defending champion with no real competition. Anil Mehul is looking to improve on a third-round finish last year; a fourth-round result would give him a perfect set of round of 16 finishes at all of the big clay events which would be solid. Meanwhile, Girish Girsh completes his set of debuts at the Slams, still looking for his first win.

Girsh went up against one of the top unseeded players in the tournament, Argentinian veteran Fabian Graff, former world no. 4. He won the first set but couldn't sustain it and lost 3-6, 6-4, 6-2, 6-3. It was his first set won in Slam competition, but really he needed a better draw to have a realistic chance of winning. Fabian may be in his 30s but clay is his best surface, and it's too much of an ask with all that experience on his side as well.

As for Mehul, he was the 10th seed as expected. A qualifier went down, then a second-rounder against Ruben Vega was testy briefly before he came through in straights, bringing up Frenchman Roman Iraugui who upset 24th-seeded Jean-Luc Veniard of Morocco in his previous match. Iraugui had lost both career meetings with Mehul but both were one-sided hardcourt affairs. Even so, the result was shocking -- a triple bagel! Anil absolutely crushed him, allowing just 14 points, four against his serve. Never would I have expected such a performance on clay.

In the fourth round, it was Antonin Iglar waiting. Why not. For the fourth time in as many Slams they meet, the first coming at last year's Wimbledon. This is actually a fortuitious matchup, as Iglar is a bit less skilled even than Mehul on the dirt and most of the higher seeds would be more difficult on the surface. Still, the Czech was still favored and would be looking for revenge after dropping their last meeting in Miami. The winner would reach the second week at Roland Garros for the first time, and take another step towards chasing down their rivals. Mehul's serve was not working of him and he ate a quick breadstick to start the match. It wasn't looking good, but he turned it around quickly. The back-and-forth battle turned into an epic, that wasn't decided until the end ... but he pulled through for a second straight win over Iglar after five straight defeats, 1-6, 6-3, 6-2, 3-6, 7-5! The fifth set really was the match after the previous four were relatively one-sided. Anil had just five aces against twice as many double faults, and total points were extremely close(144-142), but he did just enough at the end to eke out the win.

On to uncharted territory, the French Open quarters! Mick Elder was there, hoping to repeat his dominant win in Rome two weeks ago. That didn't quite happen but he was unquestionably the better player and eventually swatted Mehul aside, 7-6(5), 6-3, 6-4. A credible, competitive effort.

David Alvarez went on to beat Elder in a five-set comeback semi, but nobody was going to touch Benda here. He didn't lose a game the first two rounds, lost one in the third, and didn't come close to dropping a set en route to his third straight French crown. On clay, he is truly untouchable in this era, the only top clay specialist in his prime at the moment after Alastra's generation was full of them. But those players don't have the spring in their step to challenge him. Perry Hogue was the big loser, dropping from third to fifth after a quarterfinal loss.


Coming Up

After getting in more matches than expected here, Mehul will not be playing a grass-court tuneup for Wimbledon. Girsh has played enough to bridge that gap also, and having won another singles/doubles pair of tier-4 titles the week before the French, Mooljee will be taking a few weeks to train as well. It's going to be a quiet month heading into the most prestigious and oldest of the Slams.

A bit of a preview of coming attractions: at the end of the year I'll do a feature on Girsh's chances for his career; I still like him to do a touch better than Mehul when all is said and done. I've nicknamed the players around his age group Generation Flash, as there are quite a few of them -- 17 in the Top 100 are 21-22 years old -- but most are quite athletic while lacking the dedication to really become top performers. As a result it's hard for me to imagine Girsh not eventually becoming at least 2nd or 3rd in the world at some point. More detail on that at the end of the year.

Also, after Wimbledon I'm going to start a regular feature for the rest of the year, the Race to the World Tour Finals. The real-world event is held in London and I've done a breakdown that has proved reasonably popular on a tennis forum I frequent about the competition for the 8 spots in the elite invitational that ends the year. In this game, it changes every year: Knoxville two years ago, Aachen(Germany) last year, I don't know where it's going to be this year but it should be interesting. With Alvarez's recent emergence the competition is really heating up: unlike the past couple seasons none of the top players have skipped any Slams. I find myself very thankful that Alastra didn't try to prolong his singles career any more.

You might wonder why this matters. What's the big deal if Mehul finishes 9th or 10th, he's still pretty young and will have plenty of chances. There are a few reasons it matters a lot whether he gets in. One, it's indoors which means he would have a great chance for a good result if he gets there. Winning it outright would not be out of the question. It's in the off-season which means along with the WTC it's an opportunity to get top-quality matches that time of year which helps alleviate the pressure on the tail end of the year in terms of getting enough court time to continue improving heading into the next season. Additionally, it's a 'bonus' event that is added in the rankings to the normal 'best 18' tournaments: any points earned there are simply added on, they don't have to compete with other results to 'replace' another one in the ranking system. So getting in is a big deal for Anil Mehul and remains his top goal for the year. We could well have a dramatic finish coming up.

Wimbledon itself is the next item on the calendar, starting in about two weeks now. In the meantime, I've got my first trainer up and running on rr2. I got him to about 4.96, I wanted to check if they round up and they do, he's a 5.0. For the record, it seems the minimum required for that is 122 skill, 98 service, 98 doubles. I won't be able to use him yet, my other player is currently 16 and I'm looking for a new junior player to add just for fun but it will be probably a couple of years until he's needed and I'm able to regularly try out the effectiveness. All kinds of time for that though, I should be well versed in using him long before my rr1 Sri Lankans have Manohar retire as their first trainer.