Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, for all his talent, has never convincingly embraced the notion he can win his home tournament. And there is no guarantee a spluttering return to near his best to put the fourth seed, Tomas Berdych, out of the 2015 French Open in four sets on a gloomy Sunday evening will provide him with the platform or the self-belief to do so this time.
Still, spectators can only hope he delivers as much excitement in the quarter-final against Kei Nishikori as he did for much of the two hours 58 minutes it took him to beat Berdych 6-3, 6-2, 6-7, 6-3 in a match he could have won at least three times. If he does, who knows how far he will go in the remaining matches? Jo-Wili, as everyone knows him, probably has no better clue than anyone else.
He looked so comfortable in the first hour or so and then his radar deserted him and confusion invaded his every thought. He went from brilliant to brittle in a twinkling.
With the light fading they went to a tie-break Tsonga could so easily have avoided. A second-serve ace, 203kph down the middle, for 2-0 in the tie-break, followed immediately by another, swinging wide on the deuce side, showed Tsonga was determined to repair the damage. But Berdych hung in to grab two set points and Tsonga again hit wildly, his head dropping as he trudged to his chair.
As the evening shadows lengthened and the temperature began to drop in sync with Tsonga’s spirits, Berdych broke at the start of the fourth. Where before there had been joy in the air, now there was anxiety as the crowd wondered and worried.
Tsonga toughed it, broke back and held for 3-2, swearing loudly at himself.
Ever so slowly the magic returned. An hour after blowing the third set at 5-4 up and 30-40 with an overcooked forehand, Tsonga, having fashioned an ugly but effective fightback, belted a concluding forehand down the line that left Berdych dumbfounded. He had not played badly. He had just played, at key moments, on a different planet to the Frenchman.
Dani Vallverdu has done great work with the Czech since he and Andy Murray parted company last year but Berdych has never come back from two sets down in a major. It is the sort of baggage that is hard to shift, hard to repair.
Nishikori, meanwhile, is cruising. Yet to drop a set in his four matches, he looks scarily relaxed on the clay, a surface he has come to regard as his friend. He belted 40 winners past a helpless Teymuraz Gabashvili in just under two hours to win 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 on Court Suzanne Lenglen.
Almost unnoticed he has become the first Japanese man to reach the quarter-finals here since Jiro Sato got to the semi-finals in 1931 and 1933 – a veritable Fred Perry of a tennis albatross. Gabashvili, though, did not represent the most formidable of obstacles. The 30-year-old Russian is ranked 74 in the world and had reached this deep in the tournament through admirable stubbornness rather than any palpable signs of genius.
“We haven’t played in a long time, maybe couple of years,” Nishikori said of his upcoming match with Tsonga. “But he was injured and now he’s coming back very strong. He has a big serve, big forehand. He’s always dangerous.”
As for breaking that 82-year-old record, and the interest it has generated in Japan, he said, “I think it is a little bit crazy how many medias here for me. It’s exciting for me to get a lot of support.”
Stan Wawrinka, steadily rehabbing his game, made surprisingly short work of the super-fit Gilles Simon in the bottom quarter of the draw, winning 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 in an hour and 51 minutes on Lenglen.
If his quarter-final is to be an all-Swiss affair, Roger Federer will have to lift his game after struggling with the eccentricities of Gaël Monfils in the gloaming on Chatrier. He spent half an hour winning the first set for the loss of three games and looked set for a cakewalk, then the Frenchman bamboozled him for much of the next 39 minutes to take the second 6-4. They will resume in the second match on the main court .
