Francesca must have had a red clay pit growing up

For a player who has been labelled ever since winning her maiden Grand Slam tournament here at Roland Garros last year as a first time/last time success due to her stage of tennis life and other unfathomable parameters (and I count myself as one of the labellers) Francesca Schiavone sure is doing a lot of "I told you so's" one year on from her red letter day on the red clay in Paris in 2010.

It is not just the calibre of opponent but the methodology employed to eventually take control of proceedings, even if with Jelena Jankvic it was at the very last breath.  Schiavone had to play a French player in the semis, and so could expect a crowd heavily in favor of Marion Bartoli.  The local girl was hyped as one may expect but I mean really over the top.  Between points she looked as if she was practicing fencing with her tennis racquet and by the expressions on her face her preferred prey was the Italian facing her over the net.

Anxious for first blood - not to stretch the sabre/epee analogy too far - Bartoli always seemed to be needing to try too hard to find the necessary repertoire of shots to worry Schiavone.  As for a plan of action, tactics were  missing from the French preparation, or they were not instituted.

The advantage for Schiavone, amongst many, lay in her willingness to structure a point whether it be from a position of advantage or otherwise and more times than not we saw the result being a frantic French athlete running all over the court attempting to connect a portion of racquet on ball.

Francesca is not all textbook, but she has a single handed backhand that may be copyrighted from a leading tennis manual.  Her serve is also damaging and she loves serving slice to her opponents, not just vanilla and strawberry. The single tactic employed by Bartoli was to hit the ball as hard as she could and hope that it would be enough to burst through the defence of the Italian.  For a few games it could be shown to have effect but that was all.  In the 8th game the break of serve arrived and the cleverly played consolidation game to follow sealed the set for Schiavone and the fate for Marion Bartoli.

Only the scoreline was the same in set number two.  What the crowd witnessed was a defending champion becoming an increasingly ominous threat to winning back to back titles here, the first female since Justine Henin, another great player with a single handed backhand.