Family and friends, the curious and a few stragglers, crammed into Court No5 on the first Monday of the French Open to see if the fuss about Great Britain’s latest tennis acquisition, Aljaz Bedene – once of Slovenia and latterly of Welwyn Garden City – was warranted. It just about was.
Bedene lost in his first major under the colours – in the first round, true to stereotype – but he gave almost as good as he got against one of the best young players on the tour, Dominic Thiem.
Bedene is ranked 75th in the world and thus is officially Britain’s second best player behind Andy Murray, who has given him the nod in his quest to play Davis Cup for his adopted country.
The 21-year-old Austrian from Lichtenworth (which, at a stretch, sounds like a village in Hertfordshire) won 6-3, 6-4, 6-7, 6-3 in three hours and 22 minutes – one of the longest matches of the day – and had a little too much pop on his winning shots in the tight exchanges, although the quality of the tennis was excellent for an outside court. It is a shame the court was not as good as the tennis.
The players did well not to decapitate any of the officials, so ridiculously short was the stretch between baseline and the back wall. At times, each of them received the ball just a couple of feet in front of the line judges, who had to step adroitly and as unobtrusively as possible to avoid what would have been an embarrassing and painful incident.
Week in, week out players outside the elite face such challenges – which does not justify squeezing them into such a cramped space in a grand slam tournament. The Roland Garros organisers – already under pressure for the breach of security which saw a young man invade Court Philippe Chatrier on Sunday to grab a selfie alongside Roger Federer – might like to take a close look at the layout of the courts during their upcoming expansion programme.
Thiem, ranked accurately at No31, had two break points as early as the second game but Bedene stayed calm and an ace helped him hold. Thereafter it was an intriguing tussle, the Austrian hitting hard at the lines with enough profit to take the first set comfortably, the second less so.
Faced with a straight-sets exit in his first slam, Bedene showed admirable fight, exchanging breaks midway through the third set and forcing a tie-break. He went 3-1 up and levelled at 4-4 before Thiem served to 6-4 and match point. A double fault by his opponent gave Bedene another look with two serves in hand. He got to 7-6 and Thiem struck a forehand wide to hand him the set.
At 2-1 in the fourth, Bedene took a medical time-out for attention to a recurring wrist problem, one which he had earlier identified, curiously, as “more mental than physical”. He fell behind to 1-4 and served to stay in the tournament at 2-5, still going for his shots and stretching his opponent in every rally. But Thiem closed it out with his eighth and ninth aces of an entertaining match.
The 25-year-old Bedene became a British citizen in March after five years’ residency, but until now was probably as well known to a wider audience for his pop singer girlfriend, Kimalie, as his proficiency on clay. He is doing his best to change his profile and at least showed he has the weapons to give it a good shot.
