Samantha Stosur’s French Open charge has set her up for a career-best seeding at Wimbledon this month.
The grasscourt grand slam has been Stosur’s least successful of the four annual majors, with the US Open champion’s sorry record at the All England Club showing just five wins from 14 matches.
The 28-year-old has ventured beyond the second round only once in nine visits, a staggering statistic considering Stosur possesses the biggest forehand and one of the best serves in women’s tennis.
But Stosur’s impressive run at Roland Garros could boost her prospects of finally delivering on the greatest stage in tennis.
Stosur is guaranteed to climb above Serena Williams to No.5 in the world after the French Open and could rise further up the rankings with a decent run at ‘s-Hertogenosch, her only grasscourt lead-up event before Wimbledon, which starts on June 25.
Stosur’s highest previous Wimbledon seeding was sixth in 2010, immediately after reaching her maiden grand slam final in Paris.
The Queenslander is delighted by the way she has managed to her turn her year around after a forgettable Australian summer.
Since suffering demoralising first-round defeats in Sydney and at the Australian Open, Stosur has made one final, a semi-final, three quarter-finals and gone unbeaten in four Fed Cup matches for Australia.
“Of course I didn’t play very well throughout January and the Australian Open was quite a disaster,” she said ahead of her French Open quarter-final against Dominika Cibulkova on Tuesday (starting at 10pm AEST).
“But then once I left, I kind of forgot about it and realised that the world didn’t end, it’s not the end of the world, there’s still nine months of tennis to play for the year and things can turn around.
“So I think if you really keep it in the big picture like that, you can turn things around.”
Stosur has been a fixture in the top 10 for all but one week of the past two years and her coach, David Taylor, who doubles Australia’s Fed Cup captain, believes she is often judged too harshly by her Melbourne Park disappointment.
“She’s been very consistent. You could take the US Open off her ranking and she’s still a top-10 player, which is a great thing to show that she’s winning a lot of matches,” Taylor said.
“Often people highlight her poor Australian summer. But besides that everything’s been pretty good for her for quite a while.”