TENNIS TUESDAY: French Open Review; Kvitova Returns To #2, Nadal Drops To #10; 5 Week Grass Season Begins

2015 FRENCH OPEN CHAMPIONS ARE SERENA WILLIAMS AND STAN WAWRINKA
The French Open championships were decided this weekend, with Serena Williams defeating Lucie Safarova to win her 20th major title (and 3rd consecutive) and Stan Wawrinka surprisingly defeating World #1 Novak Djokovic to win his 2nd major title.

KVITOVA RETURNS TO WORLD #2 AS SHARAPOVA AND HALEP SINK
Last year's French Open finalists Maria Sharapova and Simona Halep, World #2 and World #3 failed to make it past the 3rd and 2nd rounds, respectively, this year. As a result, their current WTA rankings were negatively impacted and Petra Kvitova rises to World #2. Serena Williams' spot at the top of the rankings is not really threatened since she has a lead of more than 4000 points and only has 3rd round points to defend at Wimbledon.

NADAL'S RANKING SINKS EVEN LOWER BUT 2015 FUTURE LOOKS BRIGHT
9-time French Open champion Rafael Nadal falls to World #10 in the latest ATP rankings as a result of his failure to defend his 2014 French Open title due to his straights sets quarterfinal loss to Djokovic. However, since he did not play for the rest of 2014 following his 4th round exit at Wimbledon he should be able to improve his ranking through out the rest of the year.

EXTENDED GRASS COURT SEASON BEGINS
Thanks to a long-awaited schedule change, the gap between the French Open and Wimbledon has been extended to three weeks, so that the grass court season is now five weeks long (3 weeks of warm-up and then the 2 weeks at SW19). Nadal is one player who will be playing in at least two of three warm-up weeks, to prepare himself for Wimbledon. He played his first match in Stuttgart and is playing doubles with Feliciano Lopez there. Federer will almost certainly play his grass court warm-up at Halle Germany starting June 15th.