Mihaela Buzarnescu, Ph.D., claims biggest upset of the French open

Svitolina dominated the Italian Open two weeks ago, but it was 33rd-ranked Buzarnescu who dictated throughout the match, hitting 31 winners to Svitolina’s 11.

“I had the chances today, but I didn’t take them,” Svitolina said ruefully as she rested her cheek on her right hand, which has “carpe diem” tattooed on it.

With a powerful, swooping lefty forehand, Buzarnescu bullied Svitolina as quickly as she could in each rally.

It would be hard to fault her for being overeager on this occasion. There was plenty of reason to think, from the outside, that Buzarnescu’s moment had passed.

Buzarnescu played her first professional match in 2004, but before this week, she had never won a match in a Grand Slam main draw; before last year’s U.S. Open, she had never played one.

Buzarnescu was a stellar talent as a teenager, and was ranked as high as fourth in the world as a junior. At the prestigious Orange Bowl junior tournament in 2005, she beat Agnieszka Radwanska before falling to Caroline Wozniacki in the final.

But as her contemporaries soared, Buzarnescu stalled. A shoulder injury kept her off tour for six months when she should have been transitioning from the junior circuit to the professional ranks. In that time, sponsorships from Adidas and Wilson lapsed, and she received little financial support from the Romanian federation or elsewhere.

As she struggled to fund her fledgling career, Buzarnescu developed a left knee injury. Two surgeries proved unsuccessful in easing her pain, and after breaking into the top 150, she was again forced out of the sport.

Buzarnescu used the time away from tennis to work toward a Ph.D. in sports science, studying the psychomotor development of junior tennis players between ages 12 and 14.

“I said, ‘Well, if I’m not going to play tennis, maybe it would help me on my résumé, to have a job somewhere in Romania or abroad,'” she said.

She finished the degree in December 2016. She had returned to playing by then, but continued to struggle with her knee. Outside of her family, few around Buzarnescu gave her a chance of succeeding, she said.

“Nobody else actually believed,” she said. “Which was really bad.”

Then came what Buzarnescu calls a miracle: The pain in her knee suddenly began to subside while she was playing in a Dutch tennis league last spring.

“I went there with pain, and then suddenly, the pain went away,” she said. “I just said, ‘Yeah, OK. Let’s go. Let’s play.'”

As she worked with a new coach, Septimiu Fratila, her results soared.

Buzarnescu won 20 straight matches at the ITF level last June and July, racking up titles in Hungary, Turkey, Spain and Germany. The streak catapulted her ranking to the top 150 from just inside the top 400. At the U.S. Open, where she had won the junior doubles title 11 years earlier, she qualified for her first Grand Slam main draw.

After reaching the semifinals of a WTA tournament in Linz, Austria, in October, Buzarnescu cracked the top 100 for the first time. According to the website Tennis Abstract, Buzarnescu was the third-oldest player to make her top 100 debut since 1987, a full nine years older than the average age of a top-100 debutante.

After a delayed arrival, Buzarnescu has not slowed down, achieving one of the fastest ascents ever once inside the top 100. She reached her first WTA final in January in Tasmania, and her second in Prague in April, pushing Petra Kvitova to three sets before losing the final. The steady results continued to bolster her ranking, and she arrived at Roland Garros seeded 31st.

“I’m happy to be here, happy to have these results,” Buzarnescu said. “I play every day, as much as I can, and enjoy the moments here. Because you never know what can happen in the future. Comparing to my past, it’s something really positive, and I’m just looking forward to stay longer and longer on this level.”

In the fourth round, she will face 13th-seeded Madison Keys, who was the runner-up at the U.S. Open last year where Buzarnescu made her debut in the main draw. On Friday, Keys knocked out the No. 21 seed Naomi Osaka, 6-1, 7-6 (7).

Despite her seeding and eye-catching rise, Buzarnescu has remained a relatively unknown quantity. Svitolina had never seen her play before studying videos to prepare for their match. Keys, who said she also had not yet seen Buzarnescu play, paused before attempting to discuss her next opponent.

“I don’t know how to pronounce her last name, so I won’t say it,” Keys admitted.

The second-seeded Wozniacki, who beat Buzarnescu in the first round of her two previous Grand Slam appearances, remembered playing against her in junior tournaments 15 years ago.

“I always knew that she had the level,” Wozniacki said. “I think I had tough first rounds playing her both at the U.S. Open and the Australian Open. It was tough matches, and I knew that it’s just a matter of time before her ranking goes up and she’s seeded in these events.”

Buzarnescu is not quite sure what heights she can reach if she remains healthy.

“Anything is possible,” she said, “I don’t know what my limits are.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Mihaela Buzarnescu, Ph.D., claims biggest upset of the French open

Buzarnescu, who turned 30 last month, reached the fourth round of the French Open with a 6-3, 7-5 win Friday afternoon over fourth-seeded Elina Svitolina, one of the favorites to win the title.

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