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Roland-Garros 2023 – Gaël Monfils is truly unique

In the so-called golden generation which has carried French men’s tennis on its shoulders for almost 20 years now, with its dazzling and its limits, Gaël Monfils has held a special place. It holds, since it is not yet time to evoke it in the past tense. After the evening he had at the Chatrier on Tuesday evening, that would be indecent. He does not have the hand of Gasquet, the science of Simon or the devastating punch nor the track record of Tsonga, by far enough the one who, of the band of four, has climbed the highest in the tennis skies.

But Monfils is… Monfils. It’s silly to say, but that sums it up. Intriguing. Exciting. Fascinating. Exasperating. Hopeless. Capable of almost anything. Almost nothing. Difficult to follow, often. But some days, some evenings even more, we would follow him to the end of the world. Like this Tuesday against Sebastian Baez, irreproachable in this context that we cannot frankly wish on anyone, even if these experiences, as long as we use them wisely, are those that make you grow.

Gaël Monfils during his first round at Roland-Garros

Credit: Getty Images

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In contemporary French tennis, his ability to raise an audience to better let himself be carried by him is something unique. Before him, there had been Noah and Leconte, so close and so different. They too knew how to infuse Roland with this scent of sulphur. But with Monfils, it’s something else again, because it borders on a form of madness that seems to belong only to him in his greatest moments. Expanding to the rest of the globe, it is only by turning to Jimmy Connors in Flushing that one can find such excess in the link between an audience and a player. Monfils could never have won this match against Baez elsewhere, but who else could win it?

The incomparable stage beast

A few years ago, in 2015 precisely, Monfils had already set Roland on fire, on Lenglen, by winning against poor Pablo Cuevas who had had the misfortune to hang out in the area. That day, Gaël had been a minor player. He had only been led 4-1 double break against him in the 4th. Not 4-0, triple break point against him in the last set having won only one of the last eleven games. He got away with it, and a colleague from the foreign press told me “fortunately Monfils is there, he is really essential in the first weeks of Grand Slam. Without him, we would be bored.”

I told myself that he was right, without however being able to conceal this thought: given his athletic and tennis potential, isn’t it in the second weeks that he should have become unavoidable? It was, all his career, the charm and the limit of the beast of scene of exception that he is. A huge stage beast, yes, more than a great champion. It would have been his fate. His choice, perhaps, who knows. But when the show is so captivating, and this Tuesday evening was so much so that “the little Cuevas du Suzanne” (according to Monfils himself) was like an almost normal meeting, how to be choosy?

This is neither the place nor the time to stoop to that. He is no longer asked to think big in a Major. Not even to be there in the second week. Who cares, about all that. This evening resembles him, basically. Improbable and dantesque, even if it is “only” a first round. The emotional power of a moment of sport does not necessarily lie in the scope of its result. She can, of course, but the stake sometimes erases the rest. The posterity of a performance exists. That of a moment too and, in its own way, can remain indelible. There is a difference here, of course, but more in kind than in degree.

Could Gaël Monfils have done more, better or something else with his career? Maybe. Without a doubt. But there, in the euphoric moment of a night session which, even once the emotion has subsided, will remain in his memory and that of all those who shared this moment with him, to hell with the limits since the charm operated in unprecedented proportions. A charm. Crazy, even. Like him.

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2023-05-31 09:44:00
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