Winners Get Their Due. But Losers Are Wonderfully Human.

She couldn’t win a single game.

In the third round of the French Open on Saturday, Wang Xinyu of China had to think there was at least a possibility she could defeat Iga Swiatek, the event’s reigning women’s singles champion and top rated seed. Wang is no slouch, right after all. She is a difficult-hitting 21-year-old who in April hit a profession-higher ranking of 59th in the planet, and she can place up a viable fight against the really very best.

But she lost, and it was as ugly as can be: six-, six- — in tennis parlance, a dreaded double bagel. The match didn’t final a great deal longer than the warm-up.

I say there’s glory in that type of imperfection.

Extended reside the frail. The weary and worn, the strugglers and the stragglers. The athletes who woefully endure losses in public.

Extended reside the defeated in sports.

We’ve observed several of them more than the previous week or so, and we’ll quickly be seeing a lot more.

Of course, this will not come about only on the slippery clay at the French Open.

The N.B.A. and N.H.L. playoffs have lastly reached their finals. College softball, developing quick in reputation, is in the mix with the N.C.A.A. Division I championships. The Oklahoma Sooners are aiming for a third straight title — and to add to their Division I record of 51 consecutive victories — right after beating Stanford on Monday in a semifinal in additional innings. Let’s have some sympathy for the Sooners’ cavalcade of victims.

Most of the narrative will concentrate on the winners of these championships. That is only all-natural. The world’s greatest athletes stretch and bend the limits of human prospective. The very best of the very best even appear capable of controlling time. No wonder we watch them execute with awe that feels existential. They have turn out to be godlike in our planet.

That is fine and understandable, but give me the tennis player who struggles with all her could possibly to win a single game in a Grand Slam match. Give me the basketball star who shanks vital free of charge throws and the goaltender in hockey who slips and lets the winning slap shot whir by.

Give me nerves that wilt when the stress comes. I’m right here for reflexes that are not what they applied to be.

Why? Effectively, the victors are generally going to get their due. But to err, as we all know, is human — totally and beautifully so. And these who drop in so several diverse approaches occupy the a lot more relatable corner of major-time sports.

There’s comfort in realizing that very conditioned, supremely coordinated, deeply battle-tested athletes can tire, cramp, succumb to stress, struggle to get adequate air and endure stinging defeat. In the act of failing, they turn out to be, even if only briefly, a lot more like the rest of us schmoes.

So we can take solace in the Boston Bruins, who posted a record 65 wins in the common season, promptly losing in the very first round of the N.H.L. playoffs to the Florida Panthers. Higher expectations for the Stanley Cup became dead weight. Who can relate? I know I can.

Speaking of Boston, in the N.B.A. playoffs, the Celtics’ Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum battled back from a three- hole to tie the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals. Then, in Game 7, with a history-producing comeback in play, they collectively laid a stink bomb, placing in performances that stand amongst the worst and weakest of their careers.

Ever been on the precipice of anything wonderful, only to fail — and fail difficult, in public? Yeah, me as well, going back to the fifth-grade play in which I forgot my lines, tripped onstage and almost broke my nose. It wasn’t difficult to sympathize with Brown and Tatum as they clunked shot right after shot, and Miami won by 19 points, with all these millions tuning in.

The red clay at Roland Garros — exactly where no step is certain, no bounce can be counted on and each and every match can turn into a grueling marathon — presents as clear a window as any into the crushing truth of sports.

Players stroll onto the courts hunting like Parisian runway models, their skin bronzed, their crisp outfits pressed. Then, after the matches get moving, reality sets in.

At the other Grand Slam tennis tournaments, the points frequently finish speedy-fire. On the Roland Garros clay, the points can extend like a John Coltrane solo. They can go on and on, stress mounting, tempo developing in a crescendo.

In the most prolonged and competitive matches you can frequently see agony — mental as a great deal as physical — descend upon the players. Uncertainty creeps in, and with it gauntness. Muscle tissues weaken and tremble. The crisp outfits — footwear, socks, shirts, wristbands, headbands, hats — cake with sweat and clumps of clay.

Wang was not on court extended adequate to endure like this against Swiatek. But Gaël Monfils of France was. Monfils, a weathered, 36-year-old veteran playing in probably his final Grand Slam in front of his household crowd, won his very first-round match regardless of facing a four- fifth-set deficit. Along the way, he struggled previous aching lungs and a storm of leg cramps. He eked out the match, but was so tired and sore that he couldn’t make it to the court for his second-round match two days later.

The march of time waits on no one particular.

A couple of days later, a a great deal younger player, Jannik Sinner of Italy — 21, seeded No. eight and increasing quick — took to Suzanne Lenglen Court against Daniel Altmaier, a journeyman ranked No. 79.

Sinner ought to have won without having a great deal problems.

He nosed ahead early, but struggled. An hour passed. Altmaier caught up. A different hour went by. The match became a stalemate. 3 hours turned to 4. Sinner held two match points — and coughed up each. They headed into a fifth set. Sinner fell behind and came back: He faced 4 match points, but won them all.

And then … and then, right after five hours 26 minutes, Sinner watched a screaming serve fly previous his outstretched racket for an ace. Game. Set. Match. Final score: six-7 (), 7-six (7), 1-six, 7-six (four), 7-five. The upset was the fifth-longest match in French Open history.

Sinner walked off the court messy and tussled, his face betraying the self-doubt popular to losers. In other words, he was beautifully human.