First day of an atypical Roland Garros at an atypical time of the year, coupled with miserable weather conditions to start the day (read: cold, windy, with a steady drizzle), that alone should warn you to lower your expectations in terms of quality of play – understandably – and rather be prepared for the unexpected. It also meant that players who have been on site for a week, getting used to the conditions and surroundings, grinding through qualifying rounds with the new and supposedly heavier Wilson balls (as opposed to the Babolat ones of previous years), would have an advantage over those in the main draw who stepped on the court to play their first match at Roland Garros.
Thus, came victories by lucky loser Astra Sharma over Anna Blinkova, qualifier Kamilla Rakhimova over Shelby Rogers, qualifier Sebastian Korda over Andreas Seppi, and qualifier Jurij Rodionov over Jérémy Chardy, all within the first several hours of play at Roland Garros.
The Frenchman Benjamin Bonzi was yet another beneficiary of that trend on Court 13 when he defeated the 21-year-old Finnish player Emil Ruusuvuori, a promising up-and-comer, 6-2 6-4 4-6 6-4. Bonzi reached his highest ranking of 176 three years ago and has been outside the top 200 since January 2018. After a decent pre-Coronavirus start to 2020, the 24-year-old Bonzi showed up at Roland Garros qualifying rounds ranked 224 in the ATP and made his way to the main draw, getting an assist in his final qualifying round with a walk-over. To even get to that position, however, he had to save five match points in his 3-6 6-4 7-5 first-round victory over Zdeněk Kolář.
The career of Bonzi’s opponent has been on a brighter path than his as of late. Ruusuvuori entered the ATP’s top 200 a little over a year ago, and currently sitting at number 92, one below his career-high from last week.
That mattered little, however, as Ruusuvuori began experiencing all sorts of trouble from the gates, largely due to the conditions. Down a break immediately, he had a routine passing shot that he smashed in the net at 30-30 on Bonzi’s serve at 1-2 and followed it with a maligned drop shot attempt that let Bonzi confirm the break. By the time he got broken again to go down 1-4, Emil had already committed 6 unforced errors on his forehand, accompanying the three on his backhand wing. The fact that Ruusuvuori was unwilling to take his chances on short balls (examples: watch the first two points of the 1-4 game where he hits middle-of-the-court shots from way inside the baseline and backs up) and struggled to calibrate his sputtered timing on his ground strokes, while Bonzi kept putting pressure on him, only served to exacerbate the problem. I counted 6 points in which Emil had Benjamin on the run, with clear chances to attack on short balls, but chose to reset the rally by staying back.
By the time Bonzi, full of confidence at that point, held serve after a blank game (a forehand down-the-line winner to start it, and a cross-court one to end it) to pocket the first set 6-2, the otherwise-solid baseliner Ruusuvuori had committed 12 unforced errors**. Bonzi, for his part, enjoyed great success with his aggressive play, winning 8 out of 10 points on his approaches to the net.
**Side note: As usual for my match analyses, I count unforced errors myself and do not rely on the official stats.
The beginning of the second set saw the same pattern repeat itself. In the second point already, Ruusuvuori was almost at the service line and hit a solid shot, putting Bonzi on the run toward his backhand corner, but backed up to the baseline again, allowing Bonzi to get back in the rally and to produce a forehand winner to win the point. In the very next point, Bonzi approached with a backhand slice on the first chance he got and put the forehand volley away for a 15-40 lead, resulting in the break on the next point. That game was a microcosm of Ruusuvuori’s inability to adjust to the conditions, leading to questionable decision making, because decision-making takes a back seat when you are still preoccupied with cleaning up the mess on the basics.
Ruusuvuori did finally begin steadying the ship, starting with his service game at 1-3, but despite his effort, Bonzi protected his break lead all the way to the end of the set. Although he lost the set, Emil ended with a less “unpleasant” seven unforced-error tally compared to 12 in the first set. He also began to respond to his opponent’s relentless attacking by forcing Bonzi to hit lower volleys and producing clean passing shots. Bonzi’s success rate of 8 out 10 at the net in the first set plummeted to 5 out of 12 in the second and you could tell it was having an impact on him when, leading 4-3 and serving, he missed one approach due to hesitation at 15-0 and passed up a chance at 30-15. He lost both points, but still survived the game when Ruusuvuori committed two of his seven unforced errors after 30-30 to bail the Frenchman out.
Despite the improvement in the second set, Ruusuvuori still remained timid about approaching the net though, even when presented with the opportunity, passing up seven chances to put the heat on his opponent.
Having refilled the confidence tank nonetheless, cut down on errors (read: getting used to the conditions after two sets), and with his opponent now finding himself on the wrong side of the unforced-error race, Ruusuvuori built up a quick two-break lead in the third set. Bonzi put up a late charge that saw him climb back from 1-5 down to 4-5 and serve to equalize at 5-5. Ruusuvuori perhaps played his best return game of the match to break Bonzi back with a blank game and extend the match to a fourth set.
Emil appeared to have grabbed the momentum at the heels of that third set that marked a visible increase in the amount of errors committed by his opponent. Bonzi, to his credit, did not allow the slide to continue and held serve early to kickstart an entertaining fourth set where both players performed adequately – to use a cautionary term, considering the continuing wind and low temperatures – at the same time. This was the set that came down to a few key points.
The first one ended in Ruusuvuori’s favor when he hit a remarkable backhand passing shot at full stretch on the 30-30 point, when serving at 1-1. He followed it up with a backhand winner to go up 2-1. Ruusuvuori came through again when he faced a break point at 3-3, when he scraped through a long rally in which Bonzi was pushing him around, finally winning it when the Frenchman sailed a forehand deep.
Third time proved to be the charm for Bonzi who was progressively getting back to his ways of the first set, increasing the pressure on his opponent. At 4-4 he earned another break point when he attacked the net at deuce and produced a delightful half-volley pick-up. Although he could not capitalize on that break point, his opponent Ruusuvuori cracked in the next two points, erring on two routine approach shots to hand over the break to Bonzi.
Bonzi did not let his chance get away, seemingly knowing exactly what to do. He attacked the net four times in that contested last game alone. After earning his third match point after an overhead winner, he snatched his ticket to the second round when Ruusuvuori’s forehand return landed in the net.
Although this is not Bonzi’s first rodeo in the second round of a Major (as a wild-card entrant in Paris in 2017, he defeated Daniil Medvedev in the first round before losing to Ramos-Vinolas in the second), he couldn’t hide his excitement after the match, saying that he is “very happy” to have won and that it’s a “special” feeling to have the chance to play yet another match at Roland Garros. As for the miserable conditions, he confirmed that it was hard find any rhythm during points due to the wind and underlined that they played a significant portion of the match under the rain. He exclaimed: “We were soaked! The racket, the overgrips, all was wet […] it doesn’t help with the balls either, they become very heavy when they take water.” (Source: TennisActu)
Bonzi will next face Jannik Sinner, another up-and-comer, who eliminated the 11th-seeded David Goffin in three convincing sets, 7-5 6-0 6-3. This is also familiar ground for Sinner who reached the second round of the Australian Open earlier this year. However, it will be a career first in Majors for either man, when the winner of their match reaches the third round later this week.