On the first day at the Grand Slams, the emotions are high or low. At the 2021 Roland Garros, it can be sunny or cold. Or maybe in the middle. Before they start, the players are generally charged up. “Let’s play, let’s sprint, let’s nail the winners and aces.”
But they never know until they began to play. Some can be very nervous, others are calm. On Sunday, there were dozens of matches. “What time is it, where exactly is it, is the clay soft or fast?”
Here are two players who lost and won.
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Dominic Thiem, who reached RG in the final twice has not had a great year. He lost against Pablo Andujar in five sets. Going in, then former 2020 US champ thought he could pick it up. But in the fifth set, he missed some key points. Thiem was unsure.
“I was not struggling at all with my motivation, but the game was just not there today. Like all the shots are missing power,” he said. “They are not accurate enough. I’m moving not well enough, so everything in my game there are some percents missing. Actually, I don’t really know why, because since I stepped back on court it’s already two months, and I was really practicing well, super intense as well. Shots were there in practice and it got also better in Madrid and Rome. But Lyon [who lost in the first round] and here, the shots and all how I moved and everything was just not the real me.
It’s just not good enough at the moment. It’s very tough situation.”
Aryna Sabalenka is ranked No. 4, winning Madrid a few weeks ago. Mentally she has finally poised. Of course, she is a gigantic hitter, but now she is concentrating more. And she won’t being angry as much when she isn’t playing well.
“I have a lot of experience in these kind of matches. I mean, emotionally,” she said. “That’s why sometimes I scream, ‘Come on, or let’s go,’ because, this character inside of me and that I have to keep trying and don’t waste my energy. In some point, I understand that it’s too much emotions, like bad and good, so I kind of have to start thinking about what should I do to win this match? Put my focus in another place. It’s help me to find this, calmness?