Ferrero Finally Delivers

PARIS —  The wind at Stade Roland Garros on Sunday made the tennis balls wander in the air as if they were as weightless as those lottery pingpong balls. The flags of Spain and Holland made noise as they snapped in the wind. The players, Juan Carlos Ferrero and Martin Verkerk, had to stop sometimes and wipe blowing red clay from their eyes.

And what they saw from those eyes during their French Open final were two different tableaus.

Martin Verkerk, the unseeded Dutchman with the big serve and a belief in fairy tales, saw a court dampened by rain and swallowed up his serve. He saw the wind as an enemy that bedeviled his service toss and made his first shots land in far away places.

Third-seeded Ferrero, who has been the best player on clay in the last year, saw nothing but the court and the ball. Ferrero, a four-time semifinalist and a two-time finalist here, broke Verkerk’s serve seven out of 12 times. Ferrero made the ball dance himself, with his clever drop shots and a forehand strong enough to cut through the breeze.

With hardly a misstep and no sign of nervousness, Ferrero, a 23-year-old from Villena, Spain, hit one final forehand through the breeze, a shot that left Verkerk helplessly still. As soon as the ball landed, Ferrero fell to his knees and kissed the ground. Then he jumped, with one leap, into the stands. He kissed his girlfriend, hugged his coach and father.

He was, as he has dreamed, the French Open champion. His victory in the finals came easily, 6-1, 6-3, 6-2, against Verkerk, but it had been born of pain a year ago.

It was then, when Ferrero was a big favorite against an anonymous countryman, Albert Costa, that Ferrero had played a tense, tight match and been a much-criticized loser.

“I had the experience last year to play the bad final,” said Ferrero, who won $938,000. “This time, before the match, I was thinking that I have to try to give my best mentally, physically, tennistically. I went to the court to concentrate from the beginning of the match.”

So concentrated was Ferrero that he broke Verkerk’s serve in the first game.

“He was returning balls on the lines and at my feet,” Verkerk, 24, said. “And, OK, maybe I was not moving so well because of a little bit of nerve maybe.”

One person moving well was a male streaker who came from the stands behind Verkerk during the changeover before the fourth game of the second set. He was wearing nothing but three tennis balls attached to a string and covering a strategic area. The man eluded four security guards long enough to leave footprints in the clay and leap over the net.

Neither player felt threatened, they said. Verkerk said the “idiot” helped relax him. Ferrero said the man made him angry because Ferrero had gotten himself into a winning rhythm. But the incident did not slow Ferrero down.

It was the most lopsided men’s final since Bjorn Borg beat Guillermo Vilas, 6-1, 6-1, 6-3, in 1978. The loser in Justine Henin-Hardenne’s easy victory over Kim Clijsters in the women’s final Saturday had captured the fewest games since Steffi Graf shut out Natasha Zvereva, 6-0, 6-0, 15 years ago. It was not a weekend for hard-fought, well-played finals.

But Verkerk, whose computer ranking will rise from No. 46 to No. 15, had twice come close to giving up tennis over the last few years and he was not devastated by this loss.

“The better player won,” Verkerk said. “He was playing all the time aggressive, so I was always walking behind the fact.”

What Verkerk meant was that Ferrero was hitting the ball so heavy and so deep that he was always late in arriving.

After averaging more than 18 aces a match, Verkerk managed only 12 in the finals. The swirling winds, Verkerk said, made timing his serves difficult. “It wasn’t one wind,” Verkerk said. “Between first and second serves, suddenly the wind comes, and you have to wait. It kept me out of my rhythm. I have to rely on my serve and he doesn’t. Today, my serve wasn’t good enough. So a lot of my games fell apart.

“But, still, I lost to a much better player.”

Ferrero, 28-2 on clay this year, says that, unlike some previous French Open champions (including Costa), he will play Wimbledon.

And he was thinking about another goal.

“I’m going to think more about Wimbledon and the U.S. Open,” he said, “because of how I win this tournament. And being No. 1 is one of my priorities. It’s the first priority. The top priority.”

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Sixth-seeded Brian Baker wasn’t quite able to make history. The 18-year-old from Nashville lost to fifth-seeded Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland, 7-5, 4-6, 6-3, in the finals of the boys’ singles. Baker, expected to turn pro after Wimbledon, was trying to become the first American since John McEnroe in 1977 to win the French Open junior event. He was the first American finalist since Jared Palmer in 1989.

Clijsters, with partner Ai Sugiyama, got a title on her 20th birthday.

Second-seeded Clijsters, who had lost the women’s title to Henin-Hardenne Saturday, and Sugiyama won the doubles championship with a 6-7 (5), 6-2, 9-7 victory over top-seeded Virginia Ruano Pascual and Paola Suarez.

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French Open Glance

*--* A closer look at the final day of the French Open on Sunday * Quotable 1: “I’m going to win the tournament at Wimbledon, no?” -- French Open winner Juan Carlos Ferrero, when asked what he planned to do next * Quotable 2: “It has been an amazing week for me. It’s more than a dream. To be in the final of a Grand Slam, there are no words for that.” -- Finalist Martin Verkerk * Fast Riser: Verkerk started the year ranked No. 170. He moves to a career-best No. 15 today * Money Talks: Verkerk, who had never won a Grand Slam match before the French, made $491,000, more than doubling his career earnings in seven years as a pro

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*--* Unseeded Finalists At the French Open since 1968: * Martin Verkerk -- lost to Juan Carlos Ferrero, 6-1, 6-3, 6-2, in 2003 * Andrei Medvedev -- lost to Andre Agassi, 1-6, 2-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4, in 1999 * Gustavo Kuerten -- def. Sergi Bruguera, 6-3, 6-4, 6-2, in 1997 * Alberto Berasategui -- lost to Sergi Bruguera, 6-3, 7-5, 2-6, 6-1, in 1994 * Mikael Pernfors -- lost to Ivan Lendl, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4, in 1986 * Mats Wilander -- def. Guillermo Vilas, 1-6, 7-6 (6), 6-0, 6-4, in 1982 * Victor Pecci -- lost to Bjorn Borg, 6-3, 6-1, 6-7 (6), 6-4, in 1979 * Nikki Pilic -- lost to Ilie Nastase, 6-3, 6-3, 6-0, in 1973

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