Amelie Mauresmo lives in her own little bubble during the French Open.
She stops reading the newspapers, she stops following world events — and on Wednesday she did not even want to dwell on what should have been welcome news: defending champion Justine Henin-Hardenne’s stunning loss.
”Well,” Mauresmo said with a smile, ”I haven’t looked into it.”
Mauresmo advanced to the third round by beating Spain’s Anabel Medina Garrigues 6-0, 4-6, 6-1.
Her match ended just before Belgium’s Henin-Hardenne’s bid for a second straight Roland Garros title ended in an upset by Italy’s Tathiana Garbin 7-5, 6-4. Mauresmo now has no major challengers in her half of the draw; the Williams sisters — number two Serena and number four Venus — and number seven Jennifer Capriati are in the other half.
Widely seen as France’s greatest hope for a trophy, Mauresmo has crumbled under the weight of expectations in the past. Loud partisan crowds at Roland Garros have left her rattled instead of inspired.
Mauresmo made her best showing at Roland Garros last year, reaching the quarterfinals for the first time in nine tries. She lost that match to Serena Williams in a disappointing 6-1, 6-2 flop.
But now she says her outlook has changed and Wednesday’s match marked a turning point. As the centre-court stadium erupted in chants of ”Am-e-lie!” she felt something different inside — and liked it.
”In the past this sort of situation made me nervous and inhibited me instead of pushing me,” Mauresmo said. ”But today, I felt it as something positive and used it as positive energy.”
”It helped me master my aggressiveness,” said Mauresmo, a power player with a stinging one-handed backhand.
On court and off, she tries to block everything but tennis from her mind.
”I try to remain in my protective bubble,” said Mauresmo, who tends to become the focus of France during the French Open. Her rules don’t apply to the lead-up to the tournament, when she was, apparently, willing to feed the media frenzy.
She posed for the cover story of this week’s Paris Match magazine, which published photos of the tennis player with a surfboard on the beach — and sitting provocatively on her motorcycle in an unbuttoned shirt, a studded bikini bottom and thigh-high leather boots.
Whether Mauresmo has become master of her nerves in the tennis spotlight remains to be seen. Her first two matches posed no great test. She cleared 75th-ranked Ludmila Vervanova of Slovakia in straight sets before overcoming Spain’s Medina Garrigues, ranked 67th.
Mauresmo cruised through the first set against the Spaniard.
Then the nerves crept in and she lost her first two service games en route to losing the next set.
She returned energised in the third set, dropping only one game before winning the last five for the match. Mauresmo exited the cheering stadium just as it started to rain.
Often hampered by injury in the past, Mauresmo arrived at Roland Garros in top shape after wins at the Italian and German Opens this month. The only other women to win those trophies back-to-back were Steffi Graf in 1987 and Monica Seles in 1990.
They both went on to win at Roland Garros. — Sapa-AP