Paris, May 28: With a top-five ranking and the experience of playing in a Grand Slam final, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga could be France's best chance of ending a nearly 30-year title drought at the French Open.
If that's true, it doesn't seem to bother him much.
“I haven't won the U.S. Open, the Australian Open, or Wimbledon. So of course I have an ambition to win one day. If it's in two weeks' time, well, all the best,” Tsonga said. “But I'm quite pragmatic. You have to be sometimes.”
Tsonga advanced to the second round Sunday by beating Andrey Kuznetsov of Russia 1-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4.
He is trying to become the first Frenchman since Yannick Noah in 1983 to win the title at Roland Garros, but his best result at the clay-court major was reaching the fourth round in 2009 and 2010.
The man who resembles Muhammad Ali was the highest-seeded player in action on the opening day of the tournament. But his ranking didn't help in the first set on Court Philippe Chatrier.
“I had the feeling that I was not hitting that well. I was always finding difficulties,” said Tsonga, who lost to Novak Djokovic in the 2008 Australian Open final. “I was not right in my stance because he was playing very deep.”
But after making a few adjustments, the final three sets didn't take too long.
“You try and find solutions. At the beginning, I thought, ‘OK, I need to put more intensity on my first serve or on the two first rallies.' And it worked OK,” Tsonga said. “But by doing that, well, he started scoring quite a few points. Against such a player, you feel, OK, let's wait for the storm to be over and in half an hour I'll see what's going on.”
Tsonga also attributed his poor early play to jitters, and playing in the main stadium.
“Sometimes you feel nervous after the third or fourth round,” Tsonga said. “But, for me, it's usually the first round which is the most difficult to manage.”
