What happens when, after years of trying, you finally achieve your wildest dream? How do you move forward and stay motivated?
Madison Keys, winner of the year’s first Grand Slam, has some thoughts.
“From the time I was 14, I just always wanted to win a Grand Slam, and what would that feel like?” Keys told reporters at Roland Garros. “For 16 years, it was just always kind of still the elusive question, and then to finally achieve it and feel that success, have that achievement and then go home and then think, `OK, wait, this is the first time that I don’t not know anymore.’
“It’s, `I did it.’ So I think that’s just the biggest thing. Just kind of shifting past goals that you have now achieved and setting new ones.”
Working on a 7-0 winning streak in the majors — the last two victories against Iga Swiatek and Aryna Sabalenka — Keys begins her first Slam as a major champion.
Here’s a look at Monday’s best matches:
No. 10 Paula Badosa vs. Naomi Osaka
Head-to-head: 0-0.
It’s a dreamy matchup between 27-year-olds: Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam champion and former World No. 1, opposite Badosa, who has been ranked as high as No. 2.
How has this not happened before?
One of the best matches Osaka played last year was a second-round loss to four-time French Open champion Iga Swiatek. The score was 7-6(1), 1-6, 7-5, and it revealed that Osaka could be a threat on her least-successful surface. This was confirmed when she won the recent WTA 125 in Saint-Malo and won three matches in Rome.
Osaka has won five of her previous seven first-round matches at Roland Garros.
Badosa, meanwhile, reached the third round in each of her previous four appearances. After going 2-5 in the first round of Grand Slams, she’s working on a 13-match win streak.
The Spaniard is coming back from a back injury and advanced to the quarterfinals last week in Strasbourg before falling to Liudmila Samsonova.
No. 7 Madison Keys vs. qualifier Daria Saville
Head-to-head: 1-1, both matches coming on clay in 2016.
Keys has been mostly money in first-round matches at Roland Garros, winning 11 of 13. She’s also won 11 straight first-rounders in majors, the last misstep coming at the 2021 US Open at the hands of fellow American Sloane Stephens.
Good news and bad news: Saville has won five of eight career clay-court matches against Top 10 opponents — but the last time it happened was seven years ago.
No. 9 Emma Navarro vs. Jessica Bouzas Maneiro
Head-to-head: 0-0.
Navarro is coming off a grueling, three-hour loss to Beatriz Haddad Maia in the Strasbourg quarterfinals — and this is her fifth event of the clay season. Her first appearance at Roland Garros, two years ago, resulted in a second-round loss. Last year, she progressed to the Round of 16.
Bouzas Maneiro has made three straight second rounds at the majors but is 1-4 against Top 10 players. Bouzas Maneiro has defeated one Top 50 opponent on clay.
No. 12 Elena Rybakina vs. qualifier Julia Riera
Head-to-head: 0-0.
The original draw called for Rybakina to play Belinda Bencic, but an arm injury forced the Swiss player to withdraw. Rybakina won four matches and the title in Strasbourg on Saturday — her first in more than a year — and has a quick turnaround. Riera, a 22-year-old from Argentina and ranked No. 202, won three qualifying matches and six of seven sets.
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No. 15 Barbora Krejcikova vs. Tatjana Maria
Head-to-head: 0-0.
Krejcikova sat out of six months, nursing a lingering back injury but came back last week in Strasbourg. She lost her opening singles and doubles matches but will be encouraged by a return to Paris, scene of her first Grand Slam singles title in 2021.
Maria, 37 and mother of two daughters, lost her first match at Roland Garros the past five attempts. This is her 11th main draw.
No. 17 Daria Kasatkina vs. Katerina Siniakova
Head-to-head: 5-1, Kasatkina. She won the first four matches from 2017-20, but since then it’s 1-all.
Three years ago in Hamburg, Siniakova won in three sets, while Kasatkina was a straight-sets winner last fall in Ningbo.
Kasatkina, playing her first major under the Australian flag, comes in with a 2-3 record on clay — but knows what it feels like to go deep in Paris. She was a quarterfinalist in 2018 and reached the semifinals in 2022. Her overall record here is a tidy 17-7.
Siniakova, playing her 11th French Open, was the doubles champion in 2018, 2021 (with Barbora Krejcikova) and last year with Coco Gauff.
Other notable matches:
No. 20 Ekaterina Alexandrova vs. Lucia Bronzetti
Katie Boulter vs. qualifier Carole Monnet
Veronika Kudermetova vs. Viktoriya Tomova
Wild card Leolia Jeanjean vs. Irina-Camelia Begu
Wild card Diane Parry vs. Robin Montgomery
Elena-Gabriela Ruse vs. McCartney Kessler
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