Roland Garros | Williams overcomes Safarova, flu for 20th major tennis title

Right-handed Serena Williams of the U.S. returns with a left-hand in the final of the French Open

A day after missing practice because of flu, Serena Williams beat Lucie Safarova for the French Open title, her 20th major singles tennis victory. The top-­ranked American defeated the 13th-seeded Czech, 6-3, 6-7 (2-7), 6-2 on the main Court Philippe Chatrier at Roland Garros. It’s the third French Open title for the 33-year- old Williams, who also won in 2002 and 2013.
“The match was complicated,” Williams said in French after winning. “Lucie played very well, she was very aggressive, she wasn’t scared. I got a bit nervous. It’s a dream that I’ve won.”
Williams tied Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert with 18 majors at the U.S. Open, and then added her 19th Grand Slam title at the Australian Open in Melbourne. Saturday’s win means she’s now two shy of Steffi Graf’s haul of 22 grand slams singles titles, the most in the Open era.
After almost hitting her opponent in the warm-up with a practice serve, Williams held her first two service games with an ace. After nailing a winner off a 127 kilometers-an-hour second-serve to set up break point, Williams ripped a forehand return to go up 3-1, and won the set with a big serve. She was leading 4-1, 40-15, in the second set, when she suddenly lost concentration.
With Safarova moving her around the court more, she started to make mistakes and lost four games in a row, including two on a double fault. Serving to stay in the set at 5-4 down, Williams screamed and swore before holding. Williams was two points away from winning the match at 6-5, 30-15 when Safarova rallied back to break with two baseline winners that landed on the line. A forehand error handed Safarova four set points in the tiebreak, which she took as Williams netted a forehand return.
Williams’s struggles on her serves continued in the final set, as she got broken with a wayward forehand in the opening game and had another expletive-filled outburst. Serving for a 3-1 lead, it was Safarova’s turn to waver, dropping serve on a double fault. After holding to love for 2-2, Williams once again swore loudly, and this time was given a warning by the umpire. After she broke on an error, Williams played a left-handed forehand in a long baseline rally at 4-2 after she got wrongfooted.
Serving to stay in the championship at 5-2 down, Safarova handed Williams three match points on a forehand error. A big forehand return by Williams which her opponent dumped in the net gave her the match, and her 20th title.
Williams had a difficult path to the championship match, struggling all week with flu and skipping both her practice and a pre-final press conference Friday. In a statement issued by tournament organizers Friday, she said she’d been feeling “lousy” and needed time to recover after she “just kind of collapsed” after her semifinal win on Thursday.
Williams dropped the opening set in four of her six matches in Paris on the way to the final. She’d been down a set and a break in her third-round match with former top-ranked Victoria Azarenka, a round after an error-strewn performance against Anna-Lena Friedsam, a German ranked 104 spots below her. In the last 16, Williams was a game away from losing against fellow American Sloane Stephens, while she once again lost the opening set to Timea Bacsinszky of Switzerland in the semifinals.
Safarova, the fifth lefthander into a major women’s final since tennis turned professional in 1968, has now lost all nine matches against Williams. Danielle Rossingh, Bloomberg

safarova clinches doubles title

A day after pushing Serena Williams to three sets in the women’s final, Czech Lucie Safarova finally got her hands on the Roland Garros winner’s trophy. Safarova and her American partner Bethanie Mattek-Sands yesterday defeated Australia’s Casey Dellacqua and Kazakhstan’s Yaroslava Shvedova, 3-6, 6-4, 6-2 to win the Frech Open women’s doubles championship.