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ROLAND GARROS – The sudden onset of the yips – no matter your sport – is no laughing matter.
Whether it’s a golfer addressing a putt and yanking it right, every time. Or a catcher who suddenly can no longer throw to second base without the ball bounding into the outfield.
Or, in tennis, a service toss that, despite the most ideal intentions when the ball is in your hand, goes completely sideways when it comes time to let it go in the air.
Leylah Fernandez was dealing with exactly this, for her opening-round match at Roland Garros against No. 21 seed Magda Linette.
And somehow – put it down to mental strength and determination, a sub-level day from Linette, and great battling skills – she prevailed in three sets.
Fernandez will meet qualifier Clara Tauson in the second round on Wednesday.
A repeat of 2021
In the heat of the pandemic in 2021, when it felt like every player’s nerves were on a knife’s edge, Fernandez wasn’t alone in having big issues with her toss.

sometimes behind, sometimes to the left, or too in front.
“During the pandemic, the situation was very difficult for everyone, but I just tried to renew with the joy of playing. Obviously, football (soccer) helped me a little bit. One can wonder how, but it’s just it helped me relax. It helped me renew with the joy of playing a sport,” she said.
But in Rome, despite her opening loss to Aliaksandra Sasnovich in the middle of dealing with a nasty cold and cough, she served lights out.
Big velocity on the first serve – and pushing 150 km/hour often on her second, which is well beyond her usual range.
“In Rome I served well, then two weeks later these moments come. They happen. I try to control them as best as I can. But as I said, I’m very happy with the way I managed to accept these difficulties and to think positive in order to overcome my negative emotions so as to renew with the joy of playing,” she said.

Two weeks later in Paris, the yips were back. You could see it in the exhibition set she played against Caroline Garcia during the Kids’ Day on Saturday, the day before her first-round match.
And it didn’t get better overnight.
Against Linette, she dealt with it this way:
“It happens. It’s never easy to have problems with something simple, but it happens. I have to be patient. I know how to serve. I talked a bit with my coaches, and they say it’s normal. I just have to be patient, and eventually everything will come back, and I’ll find my pace again,” she said, adding that it didn’t really disturb her (which stretches credulity a smidge. But she said it, so we’ll go with it).
“I worked a lot with my coaches on how to accept difficult moments, moments that are not good for me. These are moments when I have trouble, and I try to always be extremely positive. This helped me a lot today in my game and in my serve.”
Right from the jump
It was clear from the get-go that Fernandez had issues. She began turning her back to the court and shadow-tossing the ball right at the start of the match.
It didn’t seem to help much; she abandoned that idea and things weren’t too bad by the third set. Still, the thought is in the back of your mind before every toss. And after you toss and catch a couple of times, most often you will hit that third one – regardless of how bad it is.
Here’s some of what it looked like.
At one point, Linette gently complained about all the time it was taking. But not much, and not for long. There, but for the grace of God, can go any player. Beyond that, an opponent having trouble with her serve isn’t the worst thing for a player to see on the other of the net.
When you don’t have a big serve to start with, holding serve most often requires maximizing that shot. So that’s pressure; so is the pressure to maximize on return, not knowing what the next service game will bring.
But Linette wasn’t able to take advantage; she simply wasn’t playing well enough. And Fernandez was making up for that issue with full determination, a little more aggressiveness and a refusal to miss in the key moments.
In the end, on Sunday, Fernandez was able to prevail by using some of the other tools in her kit, mostly the mental ones.
Will having two full days to think about it, or wipe it away, be a blessing or a curse against Tauson?
We shall see later today.
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