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20-year-old unseeded Latvian Jelena Ostapenko has recorded a remarkable achievement, victorious in the French Open final against Simona Halep against all the odds.
What a stunning match. It ebbed and flowed like nobody’s business, the momentum sliding back and forth and back and forth.
From the opening point, you knew what to expect from Ostapenko – she was going to attack, attack, attack.
She stunned Halep with a love break in the opening game, but with the winners came unforced errors, and Halep was holding her nerve with some superb defence.
Ostapenko threw everything at her, but it was the world No.3 who stood firm to clinch the opening set 6-4, with more service breaks than holds.
When Halep withstood another ferocious onslaught from Ostapenko to take a 3-0 lead in the second set, it looked like she had it won.
But then, for whatever reason, the moment looked like it got to Halep. Ostapenko kept going for the lines, hitting and then missing and then hitting them again, but Halep started to make mistakes.
A missed backhand here, a netted forehand there, and four games later, Ostapenko had broken back twice to wrest control again.
Halep got herself back on terms with a break of her own, but the fight continued, Ostapenko breaking back again to take the second set 6-3.
And then the final set. What drama. Halep took the first break in the fourth game of the set, going 3-1 up.
But from there, it was all Ostapenko, and with luck on her side the unseeded Latvian, or should I say the Latvian now ranked number 12 in the world, won five games in a row, including three breaks, to stun Halep.
The crowd, who had allied strongly with Ostapenko given her underdog status and early deficit, were lapping it up.
In the end, it finished the way it had started. A decent Halep serve, out wide to the Ostapenko backhand, but dealt with viciously down the line for the final winner of the tournament in the women’s draw.
This game was on Ostapenko’s racquet from the word go. And fittingly, it was her racquet that won it for her.
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