Victory in hand, Caroline Garcia has a habit of celebrating by leaping high in the air and mimicking a plane flying over the court (#FlyWithCaro is trending on Twitter.)
But during a match, the Frenchwoman positively glides around the court. Her movement and her court positioning are keys to her ability to play hyper-aggressive tennis. And returning to quick-strike, high-impact style of play is the reason Garcia recently has been able to flip a switch in her career and transform herself into the hottest player on tour.
Though seeded just No. 17, Garcia is playing the finest tennis of any woman headed into the final two rounds of the US Open. The 28-year-old has yet to be seriously tested in five matches in Flushing Meadows, and increasingly, she looks unstoppable.
On court, Garcia has the style and posture—the carriage—of a dancer. The 5-foot-10 Frenchwoman exudes grace and power. She stands tall to serve and bounces on the balls of her feet when returning. In tennis, one often talks about servers with live arms. Garcia has live legs. She is both lithe and muscular—and incredibly quick—around the court.
Like a ballerina trained to sense the confines of the stage as she pirouettes and jetés, Garcia intuitively understands the dimensions of the tennis court and where she needs to be. She moves forward and positions herself three feet or more inside the baseline to return serve. The Frenchwoman anticipates and pounces on serves—and not just slow second balls. She has the quick hands and rapid reflexes to short-hop hard first serves too.
Garcia thus begins points from an exceedingly aggressive posture, looking for a short response that will allow her to crack her whipping forehand and take control of, or better yet immediately win, the point. Her crowding of the service line puts her opponent on the defensive from the moment she tosses the ball in the air.
“I always try to put the pressure on the other one to be on the court,” Garcia says.
Her style of play “doesn't look that different to me,” she said smiling. “I'm trying to play tennis. Maybe I'm a little bit more inside the court on the return, trying to play as early as I can.”
“A lot of girls play hard, play strong, take the ball early. [I’m] just trying to do everything a little bit faster and everything a little bit earlier.”
Those innate abilities and that style of play quickly marked Garcia for greatness from an early age.
But the weight of expectations was heavy on her broad shoulders. In 2011, as a 17-year-old wild card ranked No. 188, Garcia battled the three-time major winner Maria Sharapova at Roland Garros in the second round. The French teen raced out to a 6-4, 4-1 lead. Many watched in amazement, this observer included (Garcia would eventually lose in three sets, getting blanked in the final stanza).
Andy Murray, the British player and future member of the Big Four, was also paying keen attention. Midway through the match, he tweeted: “The girl sharapova is playing is going to be number one in the world one day caroline garcia, what a player u heard it here first.”
What might have been words of encouragement from a tennis superstar, prompting a young player to keep striving, instead had the opposite effect on Garcia.
“When it was 2011, after the Sharapova match, it was a lot of pressure coming from actually nowhere,” said Garcia after defeating Coco Gauff here in the quarters. “I was 150, 200 in the world, 17 years old. My game was not ready. I was not able to play that consistent, this kind of level. The weeks after I went back trying to play the same level, but it was not possible for me.”
“It was tough because people were expecting a lot,” she continued. “But the game, I was not ready for anything of that. It took me some time to come step by step to the top.”
Despite the pressures, especially in her home country of France, Garcia rose to No. 4 in the world in 2018. But she couldn’t maintain top-level tennis. She plummeted into the Top 50 and lost 12 matches in a row against the Top 20. Responding to widespread criticism, the Frenchwoman backed off her naturally aggressive game. It didn’t help, and her slide continued. She finished 2021 at No. 74 in the world.
But something suddenly clicked earlier this summer, during her opening match in Bad Homburg. Garcia was playing poorly, and she had run out of options. She scrapped her conservative game plan and went back to pure aggression.
Playing without inhibition, moving deep inside the baseline, Garcia has been on a roll ever since. She won three titles on three different surfaces. And a total of 13 straight matches coming into her first career major semifinal. The high-flying Frenchwoman has now won six straight against Top 20 opponents, and her ranking will have risen 70 spots in a span of months.
Garcia is a tennis geek’s dream: fascinating and electrifying as she athletically dances across the court, finally comfortable embodying the aggressive, lightning-strike, impact player she was born to be.
Though 28 years old and a relative veteran on tour, Caroline Garcia feels like a new breed of player.
You know, like one who might do a plié at the net while punching off a volley.
