Angelique Kerber’s first-round exit in the French Open was no shock given her clay-court troubles

That Angelique Kerber, the reigning world No 1 would lose out in straight sets to Ekaterina Makarova in the first round of the French Open – and go on to create an unorthodox infamy for herself in the tournament history by becoming the first women’s top-seed to lose in the opening round – was unexpected. As it was unacceptable.

Was this Angelique Kerber’s worst showing?

“It was a tough first round,” said Kerber in her post-match press conference after her upset on Sunday. “I had a few chances in the first set and [a few] also in the second set, and I didn’t make them. I think that was the key for the match.”

The two-time Major champion also went a step further in asserting that at no point in the match had she thought of giving up mentally, irrespective of how forcefully her Russian opponent directed the course of the match away from her. “I believed in the second set that I could turnaround the match and I was still believing until the last point. But, she played well.”

In utmost fairness, regardless of these statements justifying her intent in the match, was Kerber’s performance wholly surprising? No, it wasn’t, not really.

Because, throughout this year, Kerber has been musing out aloud about the problems and challenges clay has had posed to her, preventing her from executing her natural game. It was no different on Sunday when she mainly spoke about her harrowing defeat in context of the surface.

“On clay, I am not feeling good especially on my movement,” she said. “I don’t know [why], I cannot slide so good [on clay]. Normally, I can always move well. But on clay it’s different and always so difficult for me. Right now I think that I have to find myself again and just try to forget the clay-court season as soon as possible, and then reset and start from the grass courts again.”

Beyond the upset: Looking onward and marching forward

Speaking of resetting her season, there’s quite a bit of similarity – at least, with regard to the clay season – between the German’s 2016 and the current year. Back in 2016, at Roland Garros, despite being the newly-minted Australian Open champion, Kerber had lost her opener in Paris to Dutch player Kiki Bertens. As tennisdom knows, then, Kerber more than made up for her lapses on clay as the season entered its second-half.

Perhaps this is the only sliver of positivity that the 29-year-old can take from this upset, despite the seeming severity of the defeat this year, as compared to the last. Making a mention of this aspect as well, Kerber observingly noted, “Last year, it was a completely different year, the pressure is always there. [But] this year, the expectations are much bigger, especially in the big tournaments and the Grand Slams. And the expectations are also really big from me, because I know what I can do, what I did last year.”

To Kerber, the only way of getting past this muddled form of hers is for her to address the aspects of fitness, her technical game and her mentality entering into a match, immediately. According to her, she has been lagging behind in her results because these three standpoints of her game have not been working well in tandem.

“So, like fitness-wise, [it’s when] you are not moving [well on the court],” she said. “Then, of course, technically, [it’s when] you are always too slow to get to the balls. And mentally as well, [it’s] when you are losing a lot of first round [matches], now especially on clay which is not my best surface. [So], the confidence is not there like when I win on hard [courts] or when I win a lot more of my matches.”

As she tried to summarise this detailed listing of hers briefly by opining, “It’s a combination of everything,” it then became clearer that alongside leaving the broken-down remnants of her clay season far behind in the dust, Kerber is also wanting for each of these three elements of her game to start meshing well with the others. At least in time for her regroup ably for the grass season.