Halep, 29, needed time to find the keys to playing her best when it matters most. Her counterpunching game demands great focus and a high work rate. Her nerves were sometimes brittle; her body language and running dialogue too often negative. But she is now a major threat on all surfaces. Her straight-set victory over Serena Williams on grass in last year’s Wimbledon final was her most immaculate performance under major pressure.

“That match was perfect,” she said this week.

But clay remains her most natural habitat, even if she also played often on hardcourts growing up in Romania. The heavy, cool conditions in Paris this year are not her nirvana, however. Cahill says she prefers when the ball bounces higher and moves faster.

“A bit like Rafa,” he said of Rafael Nadal. “But we’ve worked long and hard on knowing that it’s going to going to be like this for the whole tournament. During May, when the French Open usually happens you get individual days like this. You don’t have a tournament like this.”

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Halep often trains on clay in the preseason. “I just think it’s a much better building surface for your game,” Cahill said. “And also for your leg strength, for crafting points and for your education in tennis.”

But she has had even more time than usual on clay in this strange, disrupted season.After winning a title in Dubai in February, she needed an extended break because of a foot injury but that turned into a six-month break when the coronavirus pandemic shut down the tour and much of the rest of the sports world.

She let her foot heal and did not play tennis at all for nearly two months and has been training almost exclusively on clay since returning. She skipped the abbreviated hardcourt season and the U.S. Open because of concerns about traveling, which was also in line with her decision to skip the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro because of concern about the Zika virus.

Source: New York Times

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