By Richard Pagliaro

Patience is a virtue—especially on clay.

Jelena Ostapenko concedes she doesn't enjoy playing the waiting game.

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An aggressive Ostapenko returned to Roland Garros with a bang blasting 46 winners pounding past Madison Brengle 6-2, 6-1, to score her first Roland Garros victory since she stopped Simona Halep to capture the 2017 championship.

The 43rd-ranked Latvian cracked a wide smile after snapping two years of futility in Paris with a power surge.

"After I won it was a tough time," said Ostapenko, who hit 40 more winners than Brengle in a 62-minute thrashing. "I had to get used to the pressure but now it's all gone, and finally I won my first match after two years, like, not winning a match here. I'm really happy with that.

"Because first rounds are always tough, and it's like never easy, and you get tight sometimes and you have to deal with the pressure. But I felt like really well today on court. Hopefully I can keep it up."

Ostapenko was 20 years old playing just her eighth Grand Slam when she rallied past Halep in the 2017 final.

In a brilliant display of first-strike tennis, Ostapenko punished 54 winners roaring through 12 of the final 16 games hitting Halep right off the court, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, to capture her first career championship.

It came 20 years after Gustavo Kuerten was the last player to win his first title at Roland Garros, on June 8th, 2007, which happens to be Ostapenko's birthday. Ostapenko became the first woman to win her maiden title in a major since Christine O'Neil did it 39 years earlier at the Australian Open.

Since lighting up Paris, Ostapenko has struggled at times to tame her serve and her high risk style predicated on driving the ball down the line over the high part of the net can prompt patches of hit-and-miss tennis. She's managed just two titles in the ensuing three years.



Ostapenko skipped the US Open to prepare for the clay season and that decision paid dividends today.

Now, she's hoping to build on this opening-round win, play with more consistency and fight her way back to the Top 10. Still, she knows there's work to be done. Ostapenko hit eight double faults and won just eight points on second serve today, but made her life easier following her drives to net where she was 14 for 14 on net approaches.

"I mean, I just have to be more confident in my game and more consistent," Ostapenko said. "If there is a consistency in my game, I think I'm gonna be a very dangerous player and it's gonna be very, like, not easy to beat me. Yeah, that's what I'm working on, my consistency.

"Sometimes I feel like I play well, and then some matches I don't play well. But if I get my consistency back like in 2017 and beginning of 2018 also, I think I'll be back in like top 10."

The flat-hitting baseliner can take a step toward that goal when she takes on second-seeded Karolina Pliskova next. Pliskova battled by qualifier Mayar Sherif, the first Egyptian woman to contest a Grand Slam main-draw match, 6-7(9), 6-2, 6-4.

Pliskova reached her second straight Rome final this month, but was forced to retire against Halep due to a left thigh injury. That result came after Caroline Garcia knocked the hard-hitting Czech out of the US Open second round.

Overall, Pliskova has won three of five meetings vs. Ostapenko, including scoring a three-set victory in their lone clay-court clash in the 2018 Stuttgart quarterfinals. 

"It's not 100%, but it's okay," Pliskova said of her thigh issue. "I think nobody is really 100% here. For sure, this was not the reason why I was not playing great.

"With Jelena, we had some good matches, some strange matches. I think she's a lot up and down but for sure she can just play well. From the baseline she can just like really hit the ball. She can make a lot of winners, but also a lot of mistakes.

"So let's see which conditions we will have on Thursday. Let's see how my level will be."

Ostapenko, who said she likes the new Wilson balls being used in Paris, believes the slower, heavier conditions will favor her giving her a better look at Pliskova's serve.  

"I played her many times. I kind of know how she plays," Ostapenko said. "I'm just gonna try to enjoy the match and play my game. I know she serves very big, but in these conditions I think everything is totally different. So anything can happen this year, because as I said, it's very different from normal conditions.

"Yeah, I'm just gonna try to play my game and enjoy it."

Photo credit: @RolandGarros