PARIS, France—For Alizé Cornet, read Nicole Vaidisova three years ago, read Anna-Lena Groenefeld in 2006, read former end-of-season championship participants Anna Chakvetadze or Daniela Hantuchova.
What turns a top 12 or 15 or even top 5 or 6 player into a journeywoman, plying her trade on the circuit in the hope of recreating former glories?
This time last year, on the middle weekend of the French Open, I sat in a café in Paris and perused the Saturday glossy supplement of the French sports daily and all I could see was Alizé.
There must have been 20 pages devoted to her – and she had earned every one.
She had made the final in Acapulco, the semis at Amelia Island and Charleston, and then two weeks before Roland Garros started, she achieved her best result to date in Rome, making a run through the (two-round) qualifiers all the way to the final, picking off Svetlana Kuznetsova, Serena Williams and Anna Chakvetadze en route.
Her third round defeat at the French Open to Agnieszka Radwanska was seen as a blip. She went down 6-4 6-4 and she herself said after the match that “it was as close as the score suggests. I played very well, I’m proud of the level I’ve reached and the way I play on court.”
She reached No16 in the world after Roland and, while she did not pretend that she was a candidate to go deep on the Wimbledon grass, she certainly did not expect her career to have stagnated on the outskirts of the top 20 by the time her “home” tournament came back around this year.
And here her story begins to resemble those of plenty of other women over recent years. We can let Cornet herself take up the story. “To me, it’s a vicious circle. The less confident I am, the fewer points I win. And the fewer points I win, the less confident I am.” Simple, yet eloquent. And what makes 99% of these players tick is self-belief.
“My confidence isn’t at absolute zero, but it’s not great either,” Cornet continues. “I play great on the training court, which makes it worse. I hit the ball so well, and I’ve made real progress, but I can’t take that out onto the court.” And this is where you can replace Cornet with any one of the names mentioned in the first paragraph, to which you have no doubt added your own list.
Let’s even put the Williams sisters in there – why do they lose when they shouldn’t? It cannot simply be lethargy and a lack of focus – Serena in her first round against Klara Zakopalova looked like she was about to burst into tears, and while Venus always, always looks cool, calm and indifferent, there is no way that she should have been thrashed by Agnes Szavay on Friday afternoon. She won only four games—-when was the last time she was given a beating like that, clay or no clay?
No, confidence is the thing, and it seems to plague the women’s game more than the men’s. Maria Sharapova is currently playing without the weight of expectation – she is 102nd in the world – and enjoying her tennis, dispatching Nadia Petrova and all of a sudden an outside bet at the French, irony of ironies.
To go back to Alizé Cornet, who crumbled in the second round of the French to Sorana Cirstea after already stuttering and stumbling before squeezing past unheralded Marat Ani in the opener, I spoke to her in Rome this year after her sole win on clay of the season prior to the French, when she defeated Ai Sugiyama. She spoke like the 19-year-old that she is, all boundless enthusiasm after a victory and with eyes a-sparkle, particularly since she was out of the official press room and speaking French.
A colleague asked her to close her eyes and imagine what she would do if she won Roland Garros. “Dive on the floor, roll around, then get up, kiss the chair umpire, my coach, anyone I could…!” Alizé’s just a kid. A supremely talented kid, but a kid nevertheless. She went from nowhere in the world to No16 in a few short years, while at the same time trying to grow into adulthood.
Like Dinara Safina who suddenly went from No31 to No1. Like Serena and Venus who suddenly realise that they are past the age where they can turn up to a tournament, play themselves into fitness over the two weeks and win the whole thing. Like Anna-Lena, like Daniela (remember Wimbledon in 2007 when she lost to a tie-break and then another set to a limping Serena), like Anna, like Nicole (who sleep-walked through an entire second set bagel against Sam Stosur at Wimbledon last year, pausing only to remonstrate with her coaches, as if they were solely responsible for her lack of self-belief)…
Confidence. If you could bottle it and sell it, you’d make a fortune…
Drew Lilley will be writing and blogging for www.rolandgarros.com and www.wimbledon.org.
There,s only been 1 True Champion these last 4/5 years,and she,s been honoured,this lst week, at the French….Yes! you,ve guessed it..Little Justine!……Please come back girl and show them how it should be done!