Cornet, 34, announced last month that she would retire after Roland Garros, and there was palpable disappointment that she had been pitted against a player who won nine straight games against her when they met on the Parisian clay two years ago. Visibly hampered by an abductor injury on that occasion, Cornet was booed from the court after deciding to stop, an example of the love-hate relationship that French crowds so often seem to have with their own (Cornet had been cheered to the rafters after defeating Jelena Ostapenko, the 2017 champion, in the previous round). 

Yet Cornet has always been one to give as she gets – “Sometimes the French audience surprises me, and not always in the right direction,” she sniffed after that defeat – and in reality, the prospect of getting another crack at Zheng, and on Court Philippe Chatrier of all places, felt perfect. Big player, big stage, big moment: it was an occasion made for the Frenchwoman. In 2014, she famously claimed a trio of rapid-fire wins over Serena Williams, the most notable of which came in the third round of Wimbledon. Eight years later, she was still at it, ending Iga Swiatek’s 37-match winning streak on Centre Court, one of 25 wins she has earned over top-10 opposition. With Cornet, there has always been a sense that could beat anyone – with the essential caveat that she could just as easily lose to anyone.

This time, though, there would be no upsetting of the odds. Zheng’s 6-2, 6-1 victory, while more complicated than the scoreline would suggest, ultimately played out much as one might expect from the collision of a 21-year-old Australian Open finalist with a veteran wild-card entry ranked 98 places below her. It didn’t matter. After two decades that have brought six titles, a place in the second week of every major, a career-high ranking of 11th and, perhaps most remarkably, a record 69 consecutive grand slam appearances, Cornet has done enough.

“[It was] exactly how I envisioned it,” said Cornet. “I’m really happy about how everything went. Being able to say goodbye here at home, in front of my family and my friends, it was a big, big [opportunity]. I feel very lucky, very grateful, to be able to end it that way.

“It was a lot of up and downs. Definitely, emotionally it was not easy. Some days I was excited about retirement and some other days I was very scared and very uncertain. Overall, I feel in peace today about it.”

So she should. This was Cornet’s 20th straight appearance at Roland Garros; to put that remarkable longevity in context, she has now played the French Open more times than Nadal, whose own possible farewell she watched through a veil of tears the previous evening. And while she may not have enjoyed the 14-time champion’s success at her home slam – although she did win the junior title in 2007, and twice went on to reach the second week – Cornet’s place in the affections of the oft-fickle French public feels secure.

That much was clear from the warmth with which she was received afterwards, when tournament director Amélie Mauresmo, who defeated her in the second round on her first appearance in the main draw as a 15-year-old wild card in 2005, presented her with a commemorative trophy in an emotional on-court ceremony. 

“It means turning a page for me, 20 years of my life, 20 years of full commitment to my sport,” said Cornet of her retirement. “Since I was 15 and [played] my first Roland Garros, I’ve been living for tennis most of the time, I organised my whole life around it. As I said on the court, it’s a lot of work, a lot of sacrifices, a lot of everything. 

“At the end, when you have to turn that page and you realise that it’s over, it’s a void in a way. You have to fill it in another way and find some stuff that makes you happy. Psychologically, I think it’s one of the most difficult things to handle.

“I’d like to be remembered as a genuine player who shared all her emotions with everyone all throughout her career, whether positive or negative. Someone with a fighting spirit, who is a passionate tennis player, who likes to fight and who is ready to die for it.

“I think I showed it several times, that it was actually my type of character. People may love me or not for that type of personality, but this is what brought me where I am today.”

That character was firmly in evidence against Zheng. There was no shortage of defiance from the Frenchwoman, no lack of passion, of desire, of running. All the familiar ingredients of a Cornet match were there, from the theatrical gestures and the infectious smile, to the court craft and tactical intelligence that have so often made her the scourge of more fancied opponents. But she struggled to live with the power of Zheng, who repeatedly caught her out with sudden surges of explosive pace that were all the more effective for the way she leavened the mix with some deftly executed drop shots. 

The battle lines were drawn from the opening point, where Zheng clumped an unanswerable forehand for the first of 25 winners. That was the cue for a seven-minute struggle that culminated with a Cornet double fault. Zheng held comfortably before spanking another huge forehand to claim a second break, and briefly it looked like a rout to rival the one of two years ago was developing. 

After 29 minutes, however, Cornet held serve for the first time to get herself on the board. For the first time, Zheng’s focus wavered, Cornet taking advantage of some uncharacteristic errors from her opponent to break with a thumping backhand return. That was to be as good as it got for the Niçoise – although with trademark belligerence, she saved three match points before yielding.

She left the sport, as ever, fighting, passionate – and ready to die for it.

The post Alizé Cornet bows out of tennis after French Open defeat appeared first on Love Game Tennis.

Emma Raducanu’s reign as US Open champion is over, brought to an end by the variety, craft and experience of the French veteran Alizé Cornet in the opening round at Flushing Meadows. 

For the British teenager who enchanted New York last year, romping to the title without dropping a set – just three months after leaving school, and with a world ranking of 150 – it was the most vertiginous of comedowns. With her 6-3, 6-3 defeat, Raducanu relinquished not only her title but also the 2,040 points that came with it – a privation that will send her ranking tumbling from 11th to somewhere in the 80s. 

Yet tennis is a brutal, relentless affair, as Raducanu has frequently been reminded over the course of a sobering first full season as a professional, and there are no shortcuts to success. Cinderella stories are illusory, magic ephemeral. Raducanu took the express route to the sport’s pinnacle; now she must do the hard miles. 

No one has a firmer appreciation of these realities than Raducanu herself. For the past year, she has lived under the type of scrutiny normally reserved for athletes of twice her age and attainment. Despite the bitterness of an early loss, the upside is that she can now concentrate on honing her craft, unencumbered by the weight of her own achievement.  

“Obviously really disappointing, [I’m] really sad to leave here,” said Raducanu. “It’s probably my favourite tournament. But also, in a way [I’m] happy because it’s a clean slate. I’m going to drop down the rankings. Climb my way back up. In a way, the target will be off my back slightly. I just have another chance to claw my way back up there.”

It was a characteristically healthy perspective from a player who has acquired a knack for handling setbacks with grace and maturity. Raducanu has lost 19 of her 34 matches since last year’s career-defining run in New York, but rarely has she been handed a less enviable opening-round draw. On a blustery, challenging night, the battle-hardened Cornet had the deeper toolbox and the big-stage savvy to utilise it, frequently finding answers to questions that Raducanu had barely formulated. 

When her serve went awry, Cornet adjusted with greater spin and margin. When her focus slipped early in the second set, allowing Raducanu to seize a 3-1 lead, the 32-year-old rapidly regained her composure. She chipped, she chopped, she bluffed; she scrapped and scrambled, conjuring some exquisite lobs and, as the contest wore on, a sequence of drop shots that were as deft in execution as they damaging in consequence. 

The match marked Cornet’s 63rd consecutive grand slam appearance, an open-era record, and her resourcefulness was evident throughout. That has been very much the story of the world No 40’s season, the highlights of which have included a first major quarter-final at January’s Australian Open, where she defeated a pair of former world No 1s in Garbine Muguruza and Simona Halep, and a run to the fourth round of Wimbledon, where she ended Iga Swiatek’s 37-match unbeaten streak.

“I guess it’s just called maturity,” said Cornet of her Indian summer. “You have to wait for it. It came this year.  

“Maybe because I know [this] is, like, my last year, my last two years, that I won’t have the chance to play so many slams after that, I’m really trying to soak in the moment, to enjoy it, to have fun, to take the energy out of the crowd.  

“Sometimes, I’m [seeing things at a] distance when I’m playing: ‘Oh, my God, I’m going to miss it so much in the future. It’s going to be great memories. Don’t let your nerves get in the way, just enjoy.’ That’s how I handle my emotion a bit better, and I think it helps my tennis overall.”

It is an outlook from which Raducanu could learn much. Enjoyment has been hard to come by for Bromley’s best these past 12 months, but there were signs that she was recovering her mojo earlier this month in Cincinnati, where she claimed resounding wins over Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka. This, though, was no night for fun. Cornet spoke afterwards of trying to enjoy each slam as though it might be her last, but her evident frustration in the heat of battle told a different story.

Both women struggled to come to terms with the gusty conditions and, despite the occasional flashing winner, errors were frequent. It was a night when the outcome would be determined by consistency rather than quality, and when Raducanu double faulted in the eighth game to concede her third break of the evening, Cornet sensed her chance. Serving for the set, the Frenchwoman tossed away her racket in disgust after falling behind, but she steadied herself with a combination of strong serving and artful point construction. A blazing forehand pass carried the Frenchwoman to set point, before she outsteadied Raducanu to seize the initiative. 

It was the first set Raducanu had conceded in New York, and worse was to come. Having received treatment for a blister on her right hand – “You tape it up and move on,” she said afterwards – the champion was immediately broken as Cornet snuck in to tuck away a volley. Raducanu responded with her finest passage of the night, striking her groundstrokes with length and precision as she reeled off three consecutive games. But Cornet swiftly steadied herself, and after turning touch artist to reclaim the break with a drop shot, she would not be caught again.

Raducanu was not the only former champion to make a swift departure in the face of a difficult draw. Naomi Osaka, twice a winner in New York, fell 7-6 (7-5), 6-3 to Danielle Collins, the 19th-seeded American who reached the Australian Open final earlier this year. It marked a welcome return to the winners’ circle for Collins, who has been out since early July with a neck injury. 

“I’m just really still kind of speechless, in a way, because I took the summer off,” said Collins, who had lost her three previous meetings with Osaka. “To come out here, play a tough opponent first round, someone that’s won two grand slams here, it’s not easy.”

Rafael Nadal opened his challenge for a fifth US Open title with a 4-6, 6-2, 6-3, 6-3 over Rinky Hijikata, an exuberant 21-year-old Australian ranked 198th in the world. Hijikata, a wildcard competing in the main draw of a grand slam for the first time, seized the opening set with a bold display of ball-striking before Nadal took control to win in three hours and eight minutes.

“Things are not perfect when you are not competing very often, when you come back from injury,” said Nadal. “You need to be humble enough to go through this process and accept that you need to fight, and you need to accept that you [are] going to suffer. That’s what I did today. I am able to play again in two days, and I hope to play better.”

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No one will feel the reverberations more keenly than Cornet. Eight years after she stunned Serena Williams to reach the fourth round at Wimbledon for the first time, six months after reaching her first grand slam quarter-final at January’s Australian Open, and with the end of her career beckoning, Cornet, 32, claimed one of the biggest wins of her life.

“This kind of match is what I am living for, what I’m practising for every day,” said the 37th-ranked Cornet after her 6-4, 6-2 victory. “It really drives me and I knew I could do it. I had this belief, even though she had 37 wins in a row, I was like, ‘If there’s a moment you can beat her, it’s now, on grass, she feels a little less comfortable than on other surfaces.’

“I guess I like the upsets. It’s a really nice feeling right now, and I need to process, because I still feel like I’m still playing the match somehow. I’m not completely realising what’s happening right now.”

Having won the second grand slam title of her career in Paris, Swiatek arrived at the All England Club cloaked in an aura of invincibility that intensified when she beat Jana Fett in the opening round to claim the longest winning run this century. Yet the Polish world No 1 has spent much of the past week reminding anyone who would listen that she remains a relative novice on grass. The warning signs were there, yet few were minded to heed them in the face of such dominance.

Swiatek struggled to put away Lesley Pattinama Kerkhove in round two, dropping a set for only the seventh time in four months. Yet even that blip left few prepared for a defeat that sent shockwaves through the top half of the draw, where fourth seed Paula Badosa, a 7-5, 7-6 (7-4) winner over two-time champion Petra Kvitova, is now the highest seed remaining. 

Swiatek, who elected to rest after the French Open rather than playing in Berlin, said she saw the result coming.    

“Usually I am hard on myself,” said Swiatek. “Here, I know how I felt before matches, I know how I felt when I was practising. Let’s just say that I didn’t feel like I’m in [the] best shape. So I was kind of aware that this could happen. Maybe it’s not the right attitude to have, but it is like it is.  

“I tried many things to feel better on court, on [the] grass courts, but it didn’t really work out. That’s why I’m not even hard on myself because, it’s kind of logical that if I couldn’t find it even in practices, I’m not going to find it in a match.”

Two early breaks put Cornet in the driving seat, and from there the Frenchwoman played near-flawless tennis to consolidate her advantage. Swiatek battled to a break in the fourth game, but that only seemed to inspire Cornet to greater heights as she went on to finish the match with just seven unforced errors. 

So much of Swiatek’s success this season has been underpinned by a greater willingness to take on her shots under new coach Tomasz Witkorowski. For once, though, she struggled to strike a balance between consistency and aggression, racking up an uncharacteristic 33 unforced errors. 

“The thing that I changed this season is that I started being more and more aggressive,” said Swiatek. “It was really comfortable for me to have the initiative and be proactive, but here I couldn’t control the ball. So I needed to slow down a little bit, and I was kind of pushing the ball, which sometimes was actually OK, and I played like that since 0-3 in the first.

“But then in the second set, I made a few attempts to speed up again and it didn’t work out, and I didn’t come back to being solid. When you play aggressively and you suddenly change the way you play, it’s not easy to keep that. So I got a little bit confused.”

When Swiatek broke early in the second set to move 2-0 ahead, it looked likely to herald the start of an inevitable surge. Resilience has been a key feature of the Pole’s extraordinary triumphal march this season, but for once she was unable to maintain her momentum. In the next game, Cornet reached deuce on Swiatek’s serve with a sublime drop volley, caressed over the net at full stretch and loaded with sidespin. Even Cornet was left slack-jawed by that one. When she then fired a slightly mishit backhand return for a winner on break point, an air of resignation began to descend over Swiatek.

Having held to love to level for 2-2, Cornet broke with a searing forehand return winner. Swiatek looked lost. She would not win another game.

“Usually when I’m coming back, I have some kind of a plan, and I know what to change,” said Swiatek. “Here, I didn’t know. I was confused. On grass courts everything happens so quickly.

“I didn’t tank it, but I just didn’t know what to do.” 

Cornet suggested at the beginning of the season that she was likely to retire after the US Open. Having matched Ai Sugiyama’s record of 62 consecutive grand slam appearances with her participation at Wimbledon, she now has the chance to set a new milestone at Flushing Meadows.

She may yet continue into next season, however. At Roland Garros, she was booed off Court Philippe Chatrier after retiring from her third-round match against China’s Qinwen Zheng with a torn abductor muscle. The experience left a bitter taste, and she is contemplating the possibility of returning to Paris one last time in an attempt to bid a more fitting adieu to her home slam. She does not intend to renege on her decision to call time on her career, however.

“I think that’s why I’m playing so good, it’s because I know it’s almost the end,” said Cornet. “I’m giving everything. I might just play till Roland Garros next year. That’s the plan. But, no, I’m not considering [going] back on this decision. We’ll talk about it next year, see which position mentally I’m in.  

“I just want to take it match by match. Earlier when I was walking to Court 1, I was smiling because, ‘OK, that might be the last time I’m walking to Court No 1, so please just enjoy yourself, have fun, take all the good energy.'”

She achieved that, and then some.

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