To start the year off right, We Love Tennis recommends a book. That of Florent Dabadie, a crazy passionate about tennis. With “A Revers”, he gives us a unique story that does not amount to a book on doping as we have tended to say. We went to meet him by asking him a question about his passion for Guga and about the two stars, Nishikori and Osaka, because Florent lives in the land of the rising sun.
We know you are a Guga fan, were you in front of your tv
when already injured in the hip Guga quickly sends Federer to the
cloakrooms ?
Yes of course our national Guga with his Michael Jackson outfit
in Thriller and his understated first-in-class haircut.
Guga also cut short his long backhand preparation for a gesture
more compact and close to the body like Pioline at the end of his career,
in order to take the ball much sooner after the rebound which has
hurts Roger very much in this game. It is rare that the public of the
Porte d’Auteuil is at this point behind an opponent of
Federer, that says a lot about Guga’s popularity rating. This match
from 2004 is surely the last one that really moved me at Roland,
with Paul-Henri Matthieu- Nadal from 2007 and Wawrinka-Djokovic from
2015.
You who are in Japan, is it true to say that Nishikori is a living god?
I do not think so. The only living gods in Japan are wrestlers
sumo or baseball players. Far behind comes football and
still far behind tennis. Nishikori today is clearly
in the shadow of Naomi Osaka, who herself is not yet a
super star because of her remoteness (she lives in Los Angeles).
Nishikori should win the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics
so that the Japanese public recognize him as a very good career. he
missed the boat in 2014 against Cilic, had he won the US
OPEN he would have had another aura here in Tokyo. Nevertheless I think
that he can afford another Grand Slam semi-final if
his body holds, for he is truly a man of glass. Its reverse is
really fabulous.
Florent Dabadie, JC Lattes Edition, 20 euros.
Posted on Friday, January 1, 2021 at 4:05 PM
