Jon Wertheim answers your questions ahead of the French Open, unpacking Ben Shelton’s major potential and Juan Carlos Ferrero’s Hall of Fame case.
• A short column this week. We will be back in a few days with a Roland Garros 2024 seed report and a guide for visiting the event.with special guest Danielle Collins. Andy and I have plans to do a Roland Garros preview episode when the draw comes out.Jon, Is it me or has this been a weird year in tennis. Iga is a queen. Sinner is great but may not play in the French Open. Seems like a lot of comebacks haven’t gone as planned. And and Djokovic aren’t really factors.
But let’s use this opportunity to reinforce a point: we have been spoiled over the past two decades. The statistical outlier isthe champion faltering, the unexpected ascent or the qualifier reaching Week 2. The outlier is four reliable and durable champions playing simultaneously, and each winning 20-plus majors. We are seeing a regression to the mean now. As I said to a friend recently, Gastón Gaudio winning the 2004 French Open out of nowhere isn’t the weird result.
Wild cards carry a hold-your-nose-and-accept-them quality. One of tennis’s great virtues is its fundamental fairness. Win and your ranking goes up. Lose and it goes down. Players need not impress coaches and rely on teammates or subjective judges. The sport is generally—forgive the cliché and mixed metaphor—a level playing field. Then comes this contrivance whereby players get to skip the line and leapfrog those with higher rankings.
Last week, Caroline Wozniacki, Simona Halep, Emma Raducanu and Dominic Thiem—all major winners—were denied in Paris, while a cadre of locals got in, as well as the swapped chattel from the U.S. and Australia. Not cool and not fair.As a fan of Dominic Thiem, I appreciated your favorable take on his merits for enshrinement in the International Tennis Hall of Fame. And that got me thinking about another single major champion who I think makes the grade—Juan Carlos Ferrero.
I’m not sure I see this as a matter of pressure. It’s more a question of levels. Does he have one or two more rungs, enabling him to stand alongside Alcaraz or Jannik Sinner and truly compete for majors? Why isn’t the women’s final being broadcast on ABC? Because it’s Saturday and college football—the counterprogramming—is a behemoth.The first round of the French Open kicks off on Sunday. / Susan Mullane-USA TODAY Sports
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