Australian Open 2016: French Open Predictions After Men, Women's Finals Results
With the 2016 Australian Open in the books, the focus of the tennis world will soon start shifting to the 2016 French Open, which begins May 22.
Novak Djokovic won the men's singles title in Melbourne, Australia, while Angelique Kerber won her first Grand Slam title on the women's side.
The former will be one of the top contenders for the French Open, while the latter might have an uphill battle ahead in the French capital.
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Men's Draw
While anybody can technically win the French Open on the men's side, anything other than a win for Djokovic or Rafael Nadal will be a major surprise.
Djokovic is the unquestioned No. 1 player in the world, a status he further strengthened by beating Roger Federer in the Australian Open semifinals and then Andy Murray in the final. Federer's days as a real threat at Grand Slams look to be over, while Murray is 9-22 in his career against Djokovic.
Nadal's dominance at the French Open is well-known. His nine titles are the most in history, and only twice in 11 years has he entered the event and failed to win. Even with his history of injuries, Nadal is a completely different beast in Paris.
With that said, this could be the year Nadal starts seriously faltering at Roland Garros. He lost to Djokovic in the quarterfinals of last year's French Open, and in his next three Grand Slams, he failed to make it past the third round.
Speaking with the New York Times' Christopher Clarey, Jim Courier offered his take on why Nadal's record is trending downward:
"These guys realized they had to try to take the racket out of Rafa's hand by overpowering him. It's a strategy that frankly has been employed too infrequently against the big four. Those guys have been too good for the field if you allow them to play their way. Disruption is the only option to cause an upset, since they so rarely beat themselves with unforced errors.
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Courier's assessment meshes with Nadal's post-match analysis of his first-round upset at the hands of Fernando Verdasco.
"The game is changing," Nadal said, per the Guardian's Kevin Mitchell. "Everybody now tries to hit all the balls [hard], to go for the winners in any position. The game become a little bit crazy in this aspect."
Unlike Federer, it doesn't look like Nadal will have a gentle decline until his eventual retirement. Once he loses his physical superiority—which appears to be already happening—he'll have a hard time compensating on the court since it accounted for so much of his success during his peak.
It would be foolish to write Nadal off completely at the French Open. The gulf between he and Djokovic only looks to be growing, though, and Djokovic has already shown once he can be the better man on clay.
Picking Djokovic as the early French Open favorite is going for the low-hanging fruit, but nobody in the men's game can challenge him at the moment.
Plus, Djokovic knows his window is closing—albeit slowly—on achieving the career Grand Slam. His supremacy over the men's game won't last forever, a point to which Federer can attest. Somebody younger will come and knock Djokovic off his perch sooner or later.
This isn't Djokovic's last chance to win the French Open, but all the stars are aligning for him in 2016.
French Open Champion Prediction: Novak Djokovic
Women's Draw
Winning the Australian Open could be a turning point in Kerber's career, but it's unlikely she'll have the same success at Roland Garros this year. In eight appearances in the French Open main draw, the 28-year-old German has reached the quarterfinal on only one occasion.
According to Matchstat, Kerber has reached just three clay-court finals in her career, going 2-1. Should she win the French Open, it would be a bigger shock than her upsetting Serena Williams in the Australian Open final.
Williams, meanwhile, can't stay on top forever, and considering she's 34 years old, some tennis fans are beginning to see the end of Williams' reign atop women's tennis. Bleacher Report's Greg Couch argued the nature of her defeat to Kerber signified the end is looking nearer than ever for the 21-time Grand Slam winner:
"It wasn't about an off day or nerves or her serve letting her down, as ESPN's announcers politely said.
Serena didn't have a bad day. She had a 34-year-old day. She...could...not...move...her...feet. And Kerber was blazing speed. That was the difference in the match.
It was the first time Serena looked old, slow. It's inevitable. But this moment was significant because it marked the day the arrow turned on Serena: It's now pointing down.
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Even if Williams had won the Australian Open, it wouldn't have changed the fact the French Open is historically her worst major tournament. Nobody should consider Serena an underdog for the 2016 French Open, but she's far from the unquestioned favorite to win.
Maria Sharapova was triumphant in Roland Garros in 2012 and 2014, and she's coming off a quarterfinal run at the Australian Open. She remains one of the best women's singles players in the world—except when she plays Serena.
Williams has beaten Sharapova 18 times in a row, which elicited some sympathy from Tom Perrotta of the Wall Street Journal:
Sharapova seems at a loss regarding what it will take to turn her luck around against the best player in the world, per USA Today's Nick McCarvel:
The French Open has been one of Sharapova's better major tournaments. Aside from her two wins, she has one finals and two semifinals appearances. As long as she's healthy and playing her best, another deep run in Paris should be in the cards.
Whether Sharapova will win is another matter. Before she and Williams exchanged the French Open title over the space of four years, the tournament was one of the more unpredictable grand slams, with Ana Ivanovic, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Francesca Schiavone and Li Na winning the women's singles titles from 2008 to 2011.
If that trend starts again this year, the timing could be right for Garbine Muguruza to capture her first Grand Slam title.
Although the 22-year-old lost in straight sets to Barbora Strycova in the third round of the Australian Open, she should be able to rebound well at Roland Garros in a few months.
For one, Muguruza didn't have a lot go right in Melbourne, per the WTA Insider:
Looking ahead, clay has also been a favorable surface for Muguruza, but mainly in the last two years. Going back to 2012—her first full season as a pro—her lowest winning percentage in WTA main-draw events comes in clay-court tournaments, per Matchstat:
| 2012 | 3-4 | 3-3 | 0-1 |
| 2013 | 8-6 | 2-3 | 4-2 |
| 2014 | 24-14 | 9-4 | 2-2 |
| 2015 | 21-11 | 6-3 | 7-3 |
| 2015 | 2-2 | 0-0 | 0-0 |
| Total | 58-37 (61.1%) | 20-13 (60.6%) | 13-8 (61.9%) |
However, she reached the French Open quarterfinals in 2014 and 2015, and her 68.1 winning percentage in 2014 and 2015 indicates her luck is starting to turn around on clay as she establishes herself on the tour.
Muguruza has a bright future ahead, and the 2016 French Open is where her massive potential turns into tangible results on the big stage.
French Open Champion Prediction: Garbine Muguruza
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