Curtains Fall @ Roland Garros 2006

Justine Henin-Hardenne prevailed over Svetlana Kuznetsova yesterday in the women's finals to win her third French Open title. She won 6-4, 6-4 to go 11-1 against Kuzzie. In spite of the usual unforced errors, I thought Justine and Kuzzie played a pretty good match, especially Kuzzie who absolutely lifted her level of play in the second set.

Yesterday was the first time in a pretty long while that I was able to catch Kuzzie in a complete match. I missed much of her semi-final match against Vaidisova couple of days back, and the little I managed to catch was a conservative Kuzzie just trying to keep the ball in play and letting Vaidisova make the errors. But during the final yesterday, Kuzzie was impressive.. especially in the second set. She was pretty much dictating play.. sending Justine left and right with well-placed shots and was dominating the long rallies. It was a pleasure to see her play but also a shame to see her played well and yet still lost the match. Her fine play wasn't able to win her the match as Justine was able to run down many of the winning shots that Kuzzie fired and especially during the important crucial points. Mentally, Justine was just too tough and smart and simply made sure to come up with winners when they mattered. And that made the difference and won her the French Open trophy.
So this pretty much sums up French Open 2006 for me. Oh, and one last thing, Martina Navratilova was invited to present the trophies to the Justine and Kuzzie, and whoa.. she looked really good. Dressed semi-casually in a black short-sleeved top, light brown pants and with make-up, she wasn't stunningly beautiful, but just looked really smart and attractive in her own Martina way. That was another highlight of the match for me, heh.

Okie, my parting shot.. I personally have no preference as to who should win the men's singles title later at Roland Garros. I read that Federer seems to have found the key to breaking Nadal's game on clay.. I doubt it actually, but we'll see. And of course, may the best man win! :)

(Kuzzie and Justine's photo taken from Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images,
Martina's photo taken from AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

tags : tennis | Roland Garros 2006 | French Open | Justine Henin-Hardenne | Svetlana Kuznetsova | Martina Navratilova | finals | Grand Slam | attractive | trophy |