By Thomas Swick
swickt@bellsouth.net
Each Grand Slam tournament takes on the character of the city in which it’s held.
Wimbledon is royal and decorous, having survived the subversive onslaughts of McEnroe to give us the senior prom outfits of Federer.
The U.S. Open is a big, Broadwayesque production with celebrities and buzz, high-rise seating and primetime action. (It makes perfect sense that the night match came to prominence in the city that never sleeps.)
The Australian Open is a festival of sunhats.
The French Open, which begins Sunday, contains the dualities of the capital of a country with one foot in the Mediterranean and the other in northern Europe. The weather can go from hot to cold. On the courts, there is power and touch, grinding and nuance. Because the surface is clay, a pounding style is not enough, and strategy takes on greater importance. This favors players who are both court savvy and extremely fit. Mind (north) and body (south). Toward the end of the tournament we’re left with the sporting equivalent of the Parisian ideal: the sexy intellectual.
This may seem an odd title for Rafael Nadal, a man better known for a kind of animalistic grit. But it seems to fit Roger Federer, who bears a striking resemblance to François Truffaut.
The French Open is also the only Grand Slam at which players get dirty. (I lived in France for a year, and whenever I heard Americans complain that Paris was dirty I always told them: “Only the tennis.”) Even the players who stay vertical see their white-socked ankles turn reddish brown, while those of us watching on TV note the little dark specks on the backs of their shirts that come from the transporting of clay bits during their serves. Because best-of-five matches on clay are so grueling, the eventual winners usually drop to the ground in elated exhaustion, getting even dirtier. Clay on their clothes, clay in their hair, clay on their faces. Holding high their trophies, they look like ecstatic ouvriers.
But the players are not the only ones who take on a je sais quoiness in Paris. The spectators at the French Open have a fickle, contrarian quality. “The fans here in Paris know their tennis,” American commentators will invariably tell us, usually after they start booing some player’s behavior. And I always think: Well, they paid good money to go to a tennis match – I imagine they do know something about the game. But the impression that’s given is that Paris is a city of tennis savants. Tennis savants who like to watch intellectuals in shorts rolling in dirt like construction workers.
It’s true that the stands are not dotted with celebrities the way they are at the U.S. Open. (Or perhaps they’re there, and our cameramen don’t recognize them.) Their absence will usually raise the collective tennis IQ.
But the fans at Roland Garros are notorious for being merciless to players they don’t like. Martina Hingis, escorted in tears back onto the court by her mother, comes immediately to mind. Nadal is not a crowd favorite, which I can only attribute to the fact that he’s never quoted Sartre in a post-match interview. Not even in heavily-accented English.
As anyone who has ever watched the French Open knows, the way to get the crowds on your side is to speak their language. It is the only Grand Slam held in a non-English speaking country and the French, while much more accepting of the dominance of English these days, nevertheless appreciate it when a foreigner at least makes an effort to speak to them in their own tongue.
It still astonishes me that there is no statue of Jim Courier at Roland Garros. Federer’s victory speech en français in 2009 was less of a surprise, since he trained in France (and looks like a legendary New Wave director). Heading into this year’s tournament the hottest player on the tour is also perhaps the most polyglot: Novak Djokovic. Should he win the French, and then speak French, he’ll win over the French. Not bad for a Serb.
One player who got the Paris crowds to embrace him without speaking French was the Brazilian, Gustavo Kuerten. Instead of talking, he took his racket and drew a heart in the clay. It was the perfect gesture for a people who love mimes.
Speaking of fans, Roland Garros is the only Grand Slam venue that is named for one. Garros is best known as an early French aviator and a courageous pilot (he was shot down during World War I). But before all that he was a lover of tennis, attending matches while a student in Paris. Fan and hero – the ultimate duality.