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ROLAND GARROS – If most of the 1000 tournaments on the regular tours are now two weeks, the Grand Slams are now basically three weeks.
And so, the second major of the season gets under way in the 16th arrondissement of Paris Monday. And there are eight Canadians in the qualifying, including six on the women’s side.
That is well up from the last few years, when only Rebecca Marino and Quebeecers Alexis Galarneau and Gabriel Diallo have reliably been in the prelims.
Four of them are on the schedule for Day 1 on Monday.
With her effort in Rome, Bianca Andreescu has lifted her ranking to No. 102 in the world.
It just came too late for direct entry at Roland Garros, where the deadline was six weeks ago. With that number, she would have been the next one into the main draw (as long as another player pulled out before the start of qualifying).
She has never actually qualified in Paris. The first time she played it, in 2017 – two years after she made her debut there in the juniors – she lost in the first round. In 2018, she lost in the final round to Richel Hogenkamp.
Since then, she hasn’t had to do it. But she has used up her allotted spots in majors on a protected ranking.
Andreescu made the main-draw third round in Paris the last two years, losing to Rome champion Jasmine Paolini last year. Paolini went on to make the final.
But this time, as the No. 17 seed, she’ll have to do it the hard way.
Her first-round will be against 21-year-old Chinese player Yao Xinxin, ranked No. 226 at the deadline (and No. 261 right now).
Yao has never played a Grand Slam, and has only taken part in a very few WTA events – all of them in China.
And she’ll play on what likely is the biggest and most prestigious tennis court of her life: Suzanne Lenglen. (Commiserations to Andreescu, not especially a morning person, for getting the 10 a.m. slot).
It looks like a doable draw, especially as her form on the clay has been good.
It’s been a long road through injuries, and surgeries, and a college career for the 24-year-old Can-American Carson Branstine, who began representing Canada in the last part of her junior career and won major junior titles with Andreescu.
But now, close to her career high at No. 195, she is finally making her Grand Slam debut.
Branstine knows Roland Garros, but it’s been awhile. Back in 2017, she and Andreescu lost just one set on the way to the girls’ doubles title, over Olesya Pervushina and Anastasia Potapova in the final.
She’ll play someone she knows very well: American Whitney Osuigwe.
Osuigwe, 23, has had a starkly different career, after playing the juniors at about the same time as Branstine. Osuigwe won two of their three junior singles meetings – both those wins on clay. And they first met all the way back in 2016, in the qualifying of an ITF in El Paso, Texas.
Oswuigwe got to her career high of No. 105 all the way back in 2019, when she was still 17 and the No. 1 ranked junior in the world. In 2017, Osuigwe won the girls’ title at Roland Garros, beating Wang Xinyu in the third round, Elena Rybakina in the semis and countrywoman Claire Liu in the final. She’s an excellent clay-court player, though. And she went 12-3 with a title during the spring Har-Tru ITF season in the U.S.
She has a tough section of the draw that includes countrywoman Marina Stakusic – if both get there, they would play in the final round.
Marina Stakusic, younger than both of them at 19, will try to go one step further than she did a year ago, when she made her Roland Garros debut.
Stakusic squeaked past Croatia’s Antonia Ruzic, 8-6 in a third-set tiebreaker, before losing to Yuliia Starodubsteva of Ukraine in the final round.
She was ranked No. 183 at the time, and is 60 spots higher than that now. So there has been some progress even if it seems she has hit that classic plateau that so many players suffer through when they get within striking distance of the top 100.
Stakusic stopped working with Rob Steckley, who has been with her since she ventured out into the pros, after Charleston.
There are a lot of cooks adding their ingredients to this project, it seems. Which oftentimes can be more counterproductive than productive in the short term.
Stakusic gets a tough customer in veteran Lauren Davis – who is from the Genie Bouchard generation but has been struggling in recent years with injury.
She has a lot of experience, though. And she’s been playing bigger events this year as well as the spring ITF hard-court circuit.
Alexis Galarneau made his Roland Garros qualifying debut a year ago, shortly after turning 25.
It was, if nothing else, an experience.
Last year was the first year that qualifying matches were played on Court Suzanne-Lenglen. And he had the misfortune of drawing a French player – Quentin Halys – and being scheduled on that court.
So he had to battle both the crowd and his opponent. And it didn’t go very well.
Galarneau was at his career-high ranking of No. 153 that week. And since then, he’s dropped out of the top 200.
He last played a month ago, losing a marathon in the second round of the Tallahassee Challenger (on the Har-Tru) to No. 429 Joao Lucas Reis da Silva of Brazil.
Galerneau meets a fellow 26-year-old whose ranking has once been higher but who has also struggled in Matteo Martineau.
Martineau is French. But he’s not Halys and the two will be scheduled on a much smaller court. That might actually help Galarneau.
If he can get through that, well … it’s gets a little complicated. Likely up next would be Yannick Hanflam, who is solid.
Borna Coric, the No. 1 seed in the qualifying and a former world No. 12, might loom
Coric has gotten his ranking back up to No. 84 by grinding it out in the Challengers, after falling all the way to No. 145. But he was at No. 109 at the entry deadline for the main draw. And so he sits in that must unwelcome spot – top dog in the Qs.
Unusually, the scheduling and draw gods actually split up the Canadian contingent over the first two days of qualifying rather than have most of them end up playing the same day.
Even though they could have been a little nicer and not scheduled Andreescu on Suzanne-Lenglen at the same time as Stakusic – and then Branstine, who will be across the site on Court 4.
On Tuesday, Rebecca Marino, Kayla Cross and 18-year-old Victoria Mboko will be on the schedule – with the latter two making their RG debuts.
On the men’s side, Liam Draxl, who squeezed into a seeded spot, will also make his debut.
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