Tennis is a game played in the space between the ears as much as the space between the lines. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova always had the talent to live with the best and now, with her 30th birthday looming, she has acquired the temperament to complement her redoubtable gifts. It is a potent combination, and it proved too much for the 85th-ranked Tamara Zidansek as Pavlyuchenkova calmly, if belatedly, reached her first major final with a 7-5, 6-3 victory at the French Open.
It was a triumph of patience and perseverance for the Russian, whose struggle to fulfil the promise of a spectacular junior career has spanned 52 grand slams in the senior ranks. No major finalist has waited longer to make the breakthrough, and there must have been times when Pavlyuchenkova wondered whether she would ever emulate the success of her youth, when she won topped the junior rankings and won the girls’ singles at the Australian and US Open. She now stands one win away from exorcising those demons permanently.
“I had my own long, special road,” said Pavlyuchenkova, who will face Barbora Krejcikova in Saturday’s final after the Czech defeated Maria Sakkari. “Everybody has different ways. I’m just happy I’m in the final, trying to enjoy. I think about [winning a major] all the time. Been thinking about it since I was a junior, since I was a little kid, since I started playing tennis. That’s what you’re playing for. That’s what you want. It’s been there in my head forever.”
She has certainly had long enough to contemplate it. It is a decade since Pavlyuchenkova’s previous best run in Paris, and she was forced to draw deeply on the rich well of experience she has accumulated in the interim to get past Zidansek. But she has worked hard to add greater mental and physical steel to her repertoire, and here she showed admirable composure against a tenacious opponent who simply refused to lie down.
Defeat ended a marvellous run for Zidansek, who put out former US Open champion Bianca Andreescu on day one and has improved with each passing round. The Slovenian’s powerful forehand, struck with ferocious topspin, often with both feet off the ground, is a wonder to behold. She fired 109 winners from that wing on her way to the semi-finals, more than Rafael Nadal or any other player, and Pavlyuchenkova knew she would have her work cut out.
The Russian had done her due diligence, however, and sensibly trained her fire at the Zidansek backhand from the outset. Her approach paid off in the eighth game when the Slovenian missed three consecutive two-handers from 40-0 up, paving the way for what looked a vital break.
But as Pavlyuchenkova served for the set, Zidansek shifted gears, hitting her forehand with renewed venom and scrambling desperately for every ball. A high backhand volley came off the top of Zidansek’s frame and flew into the corner for a winner, and when Pavlyuchenkova was subsequently broken a change of momentum looked almost inevitable.
The Russian stuck to her guns, however, peppering her opponent’s backhand as she staved off two break points to move 6-5 ahead, and the pressure finally told on Zidansek when she double-faulted on set point in the next game. The 23-year-old had twice recovered from a set down over the fortnight, but another recovery proved beyond her
“I had a game plan obviously, I knew that Tamara’s forehand is dangerous, so I tried to avoid that,” Pavlyuchenkova told Eurosport pundit Mats Wilander. “But sometimes it was tough to play every single ball to her backhand, especially on the return, so I was trying to adjust.”
So was she as calm as she looked? “No, just total poker face,” said Pavlyuchenkova, the first Russian to reach the final since Maria Sharapova won the title six years ago. “But you have no time to panic – every point, every ball is important.”
Come Saturday, they will be even more so.