Japan’s Naomi Osaka at the Australian Open in January. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
Japan’s Naomi Osaka at the Australian Open in January. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung) Associated Press

French Open Tuesday: Abrams picks 11 women’s 1st Rounders featuring Osaka, Halep, Keys, Puig, Sabalenka, Anisimova, Sakkari, Azarenka, etc.

Play starts at 5 am EDT.

French Open
Stade Roland Garros
Paris, France
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Women’s First Round Picks

Kirsten Flipkens over Monica Puig
This should be a real close match, as neither has distinguished themselves this year yet. Flipkens is ranked 64 and Puig is ranked 59, and neither has much of a record for 2019; Flipkens is 7-11 and Puig is 12-11. Two things lead me to believe that Flipkens will take this match. First, the Belgian leads their personal rivalry 3-1, and second, since winning the 2016 Olympic Gold Medal for Puerto Rico, Puig has struggled just to win matches. I’d love to see Puig snap out of her funk, but I doubt that’s gonna happen here.

Arnett Kontaveit over Karolina MuchovaKontaveit is ranked 17, is seeded here in Paris, and brings in a nice 2019 record of 16-10 to this first round match here in Paris. Muchova has far less experience but sports a sterling 19-6 2019 record. Why is Muchova ranked just 73? The Czech has only four Grand Slam matches to her name, and hasn’t given herself the opportunity to collect too many ranking points. Kontaveit, just one year older than Muchova at age 23, has 31 Grand Slam matches under her belt already, and her fifteen wins have given her ranking points that are hard to accumulate under any other circumstances. Kontaveit also has shown her best tennis on the red clay at Stade Roland Garros, so I’d expect her to continue that.

Simona Halep over Ajla Tomljanovic
Simona Halep, the third seed here, is 23-8 this year, and is looking for another French Open title after taking her first Grand Slam championship last year. But having gotten to three other Grand Slam finals (two of which occurred here in Paris) and two other Grand Slam semis, Halep is at the absolute zenith of the women’s Tour. She easily could have been seeded higher if tournaments didn’t use rankings for their seeds, as Naomi Osaka’s two straight Grand Slam titles in New York and Melbourne have supplanted her at the top of the list, at least temporarily. Tomljanovic, at age 26, will be a worthy first round opponent. She’s 18-14 for the year, but only sports a 10-18 resume in Grand Slam events, of which her 4-4 record in Paris is her best single Slam event. The Croatian who now plays out of Australia should give Halep a nice warm-up for her title defense, but this match should go with some ease to the Romanian.

Aryna Sabelenka over Dominka Cibulkova
Dominka Cibulkova has been on Tour for fifteen years now, and at age 30 has probably played some of her best tennis already. She’s only 4-8 in 2019, but has accumulated a nice Grand Slam tournament record of 80-45, and in Paris she’s 21-11. The problem is that she hasn’t been to the quarterfinals here since 2012, and aside from last year’s Wimbledon, where she rolled all the way to the quarters, she’s had some trouble piecing back to back wins. Sabelenka, the Warrior Princess, is a relative newcomer to the WTA Tour, but she has forged a nice record recently, and is considered a threat on all surfaces. She hits hard and deep, but is prone to wild misses on big points. If and when she tames that habit she will be a very tough competitor and a tough out. She’s 21-years-old, and 19-11 YTD, but she has yet to break through at any Grand Slam event, as this will only be her seventh big one. If Sabelenka is consistent, she’ll have little trouble overcoming Cibulkova. If Sabelenka misses, and misses big—as she is wont to do, Cibulkova will collect the upset.

Qiang Wang over Sai-Sai Zheng
Qiang Wang, ranked 16 in the world, is the highest ranked Chinese player since Li Na, and is trying to become the second to win a Grand Slam event, as Li won two. She holds a 3-2 lifetime advantage over Sai-Sai Zheng, who prides herself in her ability to keep the ball in play. Zheng hasn’t been able to win a match in her first four trips to the City of Light, and I don’t think she’ll win this one. I like Wang to win and move forward.

Maria Sakkari over Anna Tatisvili
Maria Sakkari is a 23-year-old basher from Athens, Greece, who has burst on the scene this year and is seeded #29 here in Paris. She is the daughter of Angeliki Kanellopoulou, a former WTA Tour player who reached the Top 40 in the 1980’s, and is remembered for giving Chris Evert a run for her money here in 1984. Sakkari is 17-10 this year, which is nothing spectacular, but not bad either. Tatisvili, who was born in Tbilisi, Georgia but now lives in Boca Raton, is now 29-years-old, and hasn’t won a match in Paris in four previous tries—the only Grand Slam event where she is winless. I think this will continue. I’ll go with the Greek Goddess, and we’ll hope Tatisvili shows up with a chance of a victory in London.

Amanda Anisimova over Harmony Tan
Amanda Anisimova, born in Freehold, NJ of Russian parents, is a wonderful newcomer to the WTA Tour. When asked if she knew who Bruce Springsteen was, she was as clueless as a 70-year old would be if asked who the Kardashians were. We’ll give her a pass on not knowing who The Boss is, even though she was born in his town. After all, she moved with her family to Boca Raton at a fairly young age so that she and her older sister, who played college tennis at the University of Pennsylvania, could train and play their tennis more seriously. Anisimova is just 17 years old, which, if you’re anywhere older than forty, is a hard age to remember. She can’t drink, she wouldn’t have finished high school yet if not for being home schooled, and she’s not old enough to vote. But, boy can she play tennis. She runs like a deer, she hits cannons off both sides, and plays with the joy of someone who knows that this is a game, not a profession, but already has 100 Tour matches to her name. But her profession it is. She will take Harmony Tan, a 21-year-old wild card from Paris, to the cleaners, and she’ll make it look pretty.

Vika Azarenka over Jelena Ostapenko
Jelena Ostapenko, a 21-year-old from Latvia, who won this title just two years ago, is having a really cruel 2019. She has shown some excellent tennis in the past, but this year she has struggled winning matches, going just 8-14. To give you an idea of how dangerous she was, she’s already collected almost $8 Million in prize money, with the understanding that she’s only 21, and that she’s had a bad 2019. With that said, she’s not gonna have an easy time with Vika Azarenka, a 30-year-old former No. 1 player who is trying to make a comeback from pregnancy, birth, and then a contentious maternity battle over her son Leo. Back on the Tour, Azarenka is just starting to show both the fight and the game that took her to the top of the mountain. She’s 16-11 this year, but has played herself back into competitive shape by going 15-5 in doubles, a game she rarely, if ever, competed in prior to her pregnancy. I like Azarenka to dominate this match. Remember, she’s won two Australian Opens, got to the finals of two U.S. Opens, and reached the semis of the other two Grand Slam tournaments, including here at the French Open, in 2013.

Naomi Osaka over Anna Karolina Schmiedlova
Naomi Osaka, the 21-year-old new Queen of the Mountaintop, is looking to win her third straight Grand Slam tournament and make the WTA Tour her own. She is still so young and relatively inexperienced that she is prone to the occasional bad loss, but let’s face it, she’s 19-5 in 2019, not a bad record! Osaka burst on the scene in 2018 when she got to the Fourth Round of the Australian Open, and followed that up with Third Round runs in both Paris and London, before shocking the world and winning the U.S. Open when she simply demolished Serena Williams in a controversial final. Following that win up with her title run in Melbourne this year was like icing on the cake. The world had a new superstar. The real question was, was she ready for the throne? We’ll see. These next two weeks should go a long way in answering that question, one way or another. Her first round opponent, Anna Karolina Schmiedlova, is a very appealing 24-year-old Slovakian, who is 5’9”, and is looking to win her first round match here in Paris for the first time in four years. Schmiedlova is not going to win this match unless Osaka makes tons of errors, which I don’t expect, but watching them play will be a pleasure.

Madison Keys over Evgeniya Rodina
Madison Keys is an enigma, as always. Blessed with the athletic ability of an Olympic athlete in almost any sport, Keys possesses great ground strokes, a top notch serve, a very serviceable volley, and the ability to move as well, if not better, than almost any other WTA player. The problem is in her head. If she had the head of a Halep, a Graf or an Evert, she’d be No. 1 and be almost unbeatable. Unfortunately, she doesn’t. She has trouble serving out sets, she backs herself into corners by missing easy shots, and she is so inconsistent that if she played against a steady 14-year-old boy, she’d lose more than she’d win. Even so, when she is playing well, she is a thing of beauty to watch, and we’re all hoping that that’s the Madison Keys we’ll get to see in Paris. She’s playing Evgeniya Rodina, a 30-year-old Russian who beat her eleven months ago when the played in the Third Round at Wimbledon. Rodina could win this one, too, but she’s not having a good year, and she stands a better chance in the doubles draw. Sporting just a 3-14 record YTD, I’d be surprised if the Russian pulled off another upset.

Lesia Tsurenko over Eugenie Bouchard
Genie Bouchard would love to turn the clock back to 2015. That year, at age 21, she burst on the scene by getting to the semifinals of the Australian Open and Roland Garros before she defied logic and went all the way to the finals of Wimbledon. Sadly, she’s never been the same since suffering a severe concussion after slipping and banging her head in the locker room after a match at the U.S. Open. She settled a big lawsuit for big money from the USTA, but she’s never recovered her Top Five form, and there’s almost no amount of money that would be able to compensate her for that. She’s now ranked just 77th, sporting a mediocre 2019 record of 6-7, and she’s fighting for every win that’s possible. She takes on Leisa Tsurenko, a 29-year-old from the Ukraine, who holds a win in the only encounter these two have had: a win in Indian Wells way back in 2015. If the argument is that Bouchard was better then than now, I’d say Tsurenko is the favorite in this match.

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