WeeklySA_AdminStepping Stone: Tennis world moves to grass following a thrilling end to the clay season in Paris
By Sports Reporter
Carlos Alcaraz and Coco Gauff celebrated defining triumphs at Roland-Garros on the weekend, but such is the pace of the tennis calendar that their attention will swiftly turn to The Championships at Wimbledon.
In three weeks, the two triumphant champions will return to Grand Slam tennis at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, seeking to further their already-impressive legacies. Alcaraz is seeking to join legends Bjorn Borg, Pete Sampras, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic as champions in the Open era to win three consecutive Wimbledon titles.
Gauff, having added the Roland-Garros title to her US Open success two years ago, will bid to become the first woman since Ash Barty to win a Grand Slam on three different surfaces.
Exacerbating the task is the enormity of the feats they have just completed in Paris, for both were stretched to the extremes of their physical and mental prowess at Roland Garros.
Alcaraz edged out world No.1 Jannik Sinner, who looks like the leading challenger to the Spaniard’s bid for a third straight Wimbledon title, in the longest final ever played in Paris.
The Spaniard saved three consecutive championship points in the fourth set as he overcame a two set deficit for the first time in his career to win a second championship at Roland-Garros in five hours and 29 minutes.
Remarkably, Alcaraz and his “idol and inspiration” Rafael Nadal both won their fifth Grand Slam title at exactly the same age – 22 years, one month and three days.
“Honestly the coincidence of winning my fifth Grand Slam at the same age as Rafael Nadal, I’m going to say that’s destiny, I guess,” Alcaraz said on Sunday night. The fifth triumph of Nadal, who was honoured in a moving ceremony on the opening day at Roland-Garros, came at Wimbledon in the iconic 2008 final against Roger Federer.
The dramatic nature of Sunday’s final elevates it to the pantheon of great Grand Slam finals including that decider and other classics at Wimbledon including Bjorn Borg’s success over John McEnroe in 1980 and Novak Djokovic’s historic success against Federer in 2019.
“Honestly, if people put our match on that table, it’s a huge honour for me,” Alcaraz said.
Gauff demonstrated poise, excellent court craft and resilience to overcome world No.1 Aryna Sabalenka 6-7(5), 6-2, 6-4 in tricky conditions to win her second Grand Slam title.
Becoming a two-time Grand Slam champion by the age of 21 is an outstanding return on the potential Gauff showed all the way back at Wimbledon in 2019, when she burst onto the scene as a 15-year-old Qualifier and beat Venus Williams en route to the fourth round.
Young players are often not afforded the space to develop in their own time and there are countless examples of emerging talents burning out under the weight of expectation, so Gauff deserves enormous credit for what she has achieved.
And yet you feel there is still so much more to come from her, not least at Wimbledon, where she is yet to improve on that fourth round showing back in 2019. She will soon be plotting a course with her team to Championships glory, but a brief freshen up is understandably in order first.
“For sure I’m going to rest and enjoy it and not go into training too quickly, just because I feel like this stuff doesn’t happen too often,” Gauff said.
The ‘Channel Slam’ achievement of winning Roland-Garros and Wimbledon back-to-back is historically viewed as immensely difficult due to the physical effort involved. But the subtleties that come with transitioning from the clay courts of Europe to the beautiful grass courts of Wimbledon are not as stark as they once used to be, as 2006 Ladies’ Singles Champion Amelie Mauresmo said on Sunday.
“Historically for players, it’s a surface that requires a little bit of experience. That’s for sure,” she said.
“(But) I think that this adaptation, compared to 20 or more years ago, it’s a bit of a smaller gap.”
Alcaraz managed to win both last year, but there are plenty of other contenders who enjoyed promising campaigns at Roland-Garros that will look to replicate that success at Wimbledon this year.
At the age of 38, Novak Djokovic displayed his enduring, title-contender credentials once again and cannot be counted out at Wimbledon, while it will be intriguing to see how Iga Swiatek approaches The Championships this year, as she arrives without the Roland-Garros title in tow for the first time since 2021.
