Challengers had a US man winning the French Open. Reality is very different

Yahoo

5 days ago

The most shocking moment of the 2024 psychosexual tennis film Challengers is not the traumatic knee injury, any frame from the quasi-sex scenes, or the passionate rally with which the movie concludes. It's the reveal that one of the characters, American ATP tennis player Art Donaldson, has won the French Open twice, a stat so foreign to US men we must have a sequel simply for Donaldson to explain how he found success on clay.
No American man has lifted the trophy – or even made the semi-finals – on the Parisian clay courts since Andre Agassi did so in 1999. And at the time of Challengers' release, no American man had made the quarter-finals since (bet you won't guess this one) Agassi in 2003. American women have a storied history on clay – Chris Evert's seven Roland-Garros titles and 125-match winning streak on the surface are legend; Serena Williams won Roland-Garros three times; Coco Gauff goes deep there every year and is back in the semi-finals this time – but the men, outside a brief burst in the 1980s and 1990s, have had little luck in the Open era. The 21st-century union between American men and Parisian clay courts is, somehow, more distant and fraught than Art's relationship with his wife, Tashi, in Challengers.
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The former of those relationships may be getting a tad more affectionate though. At Roland-Garros this year, Americans Tommy Paul and Frances Tiafoe broke the 22-year quarter-final drought. Tiafoe, previously an unaccomplished clay player, dialed in his whipped forehand and bunted backhand and didn't drop a set en route to the last eight. Paul scrapped to get there, gritting out a comeback from two sets down against the musclebound Marton Fucsovics and a marathon against Karen Khachanov despite a lower ab injury and a relative lack of raw pace on his shots. A smattering of other Americans fell short of the quarter-finals, but impressed nonetheless: Ben Shelton pushed defending champion Carlos Alcaraz to a tight four sets, unheralded Ethan Quinn made the third round.
So no Art Donaldson heroics here, but certainly reason for optimism. The question is how much. The American men's runs ended abruptly and with little struggle. Paul's physical issues intensified, making him ideal prey that Alcaraz feasted ravenously on in the quarter-finals: 6-0, 6-1, 6-4. And Tiafoe lost in four sets to Lorenzo Musetti, a clay-courter by trade, accounting for himself well until 5-5 in a decisive third set before losing eight of the final 10 games.
The matches outlined the highest standard of play on the slow, shifting clay surface. 'Tiafoe ran up against somebody who really is a clay-courter,' Steve Tignor, a longtime senior writer for Tennis.com, said on Tuesday. 'He hadn't lost a set, but I don't know if he'd played anybody who was a really top-tier clay-court guy, who could really make him hit a lot of balls.' We spoke before Alcaraz-Paul, but asked about Paul's potential to win the match, Tignor said, 'I don't really give him too serious a chance.'
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In an early rally against Alcaraz, Paul got off some of his best groundstrokes, steadily pushing Alcaraz from side to side while improving his own court position. But on the run, from miles beyond the baseline, Alcaraz suddenly uncorked a forehand down the line that blazed past Paul. The shot signified the tennis gods' uneven distribution of gifts. Such power, so far outside Paul's capabilities and so comfortably within Alcaraz's, cannot be acquired or taught, only identified and honed.
Even if Tiafoe or Paul had made the final, world No 1 Jannik Sinner most likely would have been waiting. Sinner hits heavy and hard with no cost to accuracy, a living nightmare of an opponent. 'Sinner already seems like a guy, maybe even more than Alcaraz, who's just going to stand in the way of the Americans,' Tignor said. 'I imagine if any of the Americans had come up against him [at Roland-Garros], they would have lost.'
In April, Tiafoe told Reem Abulleil that tennis is more open since the end of the Big Three era: 'Anybody can win slams.' In the wake of the retirements of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, plus Novak Djokovic finally showing signs of slowing down, this figured to be an accurate take on the new tennis world order. Empirical evidence so far suggests otherwise. Sinner and Alcaraz have shared the last five major titles and are in their early 20s. They look intent on spending the next decade gradually proving Tiafoe's quote wrong.
Paul and Tiafoe performed as well as can be expected at Roland-Garros. So what's the future for the American men on clay, this surface once more ruled by generational talents? There seems to be no room for mere mortals, but that's hardly the mortals' fault. They'll keep trying, keep improving, and perhaps eventually this country of 340 million will once again produce a men's Roland-Garros champion. Until then, American fans can best do justice to their rooting interests by respecting the enormity of the task.