Whew, the French Open finished a couple of days ago, with more than its fair share of surprise and drama: Maria Sharapova, the 2nd seed, not getting past the 4th round; the great Roger Federer, also seeded 2nd knocked out in the quarter finals; Rafael Nadal out in the quarters, too. Most amazing of all, 9th seed Stan Wawrinka ending Novak Djokovic’s dreams of finally winning at Roland Garros, for this year at least.

For me, however, the most intriguing stories involved two lesser known players, both women:  Timea Bacsinszky (26), from Switzerland, the number 23 seed, who put out last year’s Wimbledon winner, Petra Kvitova, before reaching the semi-final where she actually took a set off the apparently invincible Serena Williams; and the 33-year-old unseeded Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, from Croatia, who eliminated world number three Simona Halep in straight sets.

But it’s not how well these two women played which fascinates me, but something else which they have in common:  that both their careers were interrupted before they started to fight their way back up again.

Timea (in the photo above) was, it seems, over-pushed to do well at tennis by her father, a Romanian tennis coach, from whom she is now estranged.  She did well as a junior, then worked her way into the top 50 before suffering a serious foot injury in 2011.  She ended up working in restaurants and bars before attending hotel management school and getting a job in a hotel in Lausanne.  

In May 2013 she received an email telling her that she was eligible to compete in that month’s French Open qualifier. Despite not having practiced for months, she asked if she could have some time off work and set off, by car, to Paris, where she promptly lost in the first round.

This, however, spurred her on to take up tennis again. She scratched together enough money to hire Stan Wawrinka’s former coach, Dimitri Zavialoff, who helped her to improve her game enough to reach the 4th round of the Wuhan Open the following year, where she defeated world number 4, Maria Sharapova.

In early 2015 she got to the semi-final at Shenzhen where she put out Petra Kvotova for the first time, before losing in her first WTA final since 2010 to world number 3, Simona Halep. Good performances in the Aussie Open, and at Acapulco and Monterey, took her into the top 30 for the first time, with her performance at Roland Garros taking her up to number 15.

*******************************************************************************

Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, 7 years older than Timea, had even more years out of the game.

As Mirjana Lucic she, like Timea, started very young, winning the girls’ singles title at the 1996 US Open, and the girls’ singles and doubles titles at the Australian Open in 1997, becoming only the third player in the Open Era to win two junior Grand Slam singles titles by the age of 14 (the others being Martina Hingis and Jennifer Capriati).

She turned professional at 15, winning the first ever professional tournament she entered, the 1997 Croatian Bol Ladies Open. Still just 15 she won the women’s doubles (with her partner Martina Hingis) at the 1998 Australian Open and, in the same year, won the Croatian Bol title again, the youngest ever player successfully to defend a title. 

Then, in the following year, 1999, she beat world number 4, Monica Seles, to reach the Wimbledon semi-finals  where it took Steffi Graf, at the height of her form, to stop her getting to the final.

She has since come out to say that abuse from her father led her to drop out of tennis a year or so later, and it took her happy new life with her husband, Daniele Baroni, - whom she married in 2011 - to bring her back into the fold.

Her recent run of success started in September last year when she beat Halep, then ranked number 2 in the world, in the 3rd round of the US open, going on to beat Venus Williams a week later in the Tournoi de Quebec singles final (where she also won the women’s doubles), setting the record for the longest gap between titles in the Open Era.

*****************************************************************************

So, those are my two current tennis heroines. Let’s hope they can do themselves proud at Wimbledon, later this month.