Forget: “As a leader, I have to make sure that the tennis spectacle will continue to exist”

Guy Forget is a very busy man. The Roland-Garros qualifications kicked off an intense streak this week which will end on Sunday, June 13, the day of the men’s singles final, for the tournament director. Concerned about the health situation and limited ticket sales in these times of coronavirus, he will have to manage a complicated fortnight. It was therefore upstream of this that he agreed to take the time for reflection and confessions as part of Antoine Benneteau’s Exchange podcast to be discovered this Wednesday on our site.

During this river interview, Forget notably exposed his vision of the game. He insisted on the parameters which escape the French Tennis Federation (FFT) to bring out a champion, at a time when French tennis is going through a difficult period. .

“I am for mental work of course, but I find there are sometimes insulting shortcuts. I also believe in the uniqueness of the athlete, in the innate. I believe that if Federer had been born in La Ciotat, he would have had the same career. (…) A federation can produce Top 100 in number, that yes. But if there was a recipe, all the players at Nadal’s academy in Mallorca would be like him. Jim Courier said that training five hours a day was a talent, and he’s right“, he estimated.

The former Davis Cup captain of the Blues also spoke of his new role as tournament director, which forced him to adopt a new perspective on the game. “When you are a player or a coach, the goal is to be efficient. As a leader, I have to make sure that the tennis spectacle will continue to exist. (…) When I watch a match, I want an opposition of styles, guys or girls who make me vibrate“, he still considered. Perhaps more than the length of the matches which scare the diffusers, Forget sees in the emergence of a stereotypical way of playing one of the biggest dangers which threaten tennis.

However, should we refrain from modifying the rules of the game at the margin? A great supporter of No-Let, the director of Roland-Garros is convinced that the Grand Slams and the ITF (International Tennis Federation) have a role to play in bringing some slight alterations that generate a spectacle, unlike ATP and the WTA. “When a serve is let, two out of three times, that’s an incredible point behind. Why are we depriving ourselves of that? Why does No-Let exist? Because the players don’t want to change anything. ” These are the few keys to an exciting reasoning to discover on our site this Wednesday.