“That was the goal obviously! » When asked if taking the Simonne-Mathieu public was planned before the meeting, Corentin Moutet did not hesitate for a single second. The 25-year-old Frenchman did everything he could. From the pre-match to the 2h47 of combat, the 79th in the world took on the supporters of Porte d’Auteuil in an atmosphere worthy of a football stadium to bring down the number 16 seed Nicolás Jarry, a recent finalist of the Masters 1000 in Rome, in four sets (6-2, 6-1, 3-6, 6-0).
It all started on social networks before the meeting. Having already defeated the Chilean in March, but on opposing soil, Moutet had not really appreciated the local hostility. Whistled from the first to the last point, one of the enfant terribles of French tennis called on his fans to take “revenge” on Instagram: “We are at home. Be ready and loud. This is Paris! »
“It was pure madness”
Message received 5 out of 5 in the Simonne-Mathieu bays. From the first game of the match, the public stood up as one man on a winning spoon serve. The rest of the evening descended into irrationality. First on the pitch, where the Frenchman distilled an almost perfect score from A to Z, handling the Chilean perfectly with his left-handed touch.
But above all in the public, at each important point won by the Frenchman, if it was not a thunderous applause that resonated, Moutet asked with one hand behind his ear for a little more noise. “The Chilean is going to eat it,” exclaims the spectator right in front of us.
A little closer to the field, Jérôme, who came onto the court a little randomly and without knowing the programming, quickly got into the game. “It was pure madness. A bit like in a football stadium. There was a lot of shouting all the time. I didn’t remember that it was like that for tennis,” tells us this resident of Hauts-de-Seine who had not visited Porte d’Auteuil for 6 years.
Jarry ended up going off the rails
Transcended, the native of Neuilly-sur-Seine gave the public what they deserved. Great show. First in the first two sets, in almost perfect tennis, when his opponent stammered his. Then in a one-sided and high-flying fourth round. Before a closing speech of the same ilk with references to Cédric Doumbé, a little provocation in Spanish, and a little dedication to his mother for Mother’s Day.
“I tried to show the public that I was grateful. I live for these moments. Most of the time, we are in the shadows. Training is hard. Games like that are a small percentage of our lives. I train all these hours for these moments. We live for that. This is what drives me,” explained the Frenchman after the meeting.
Opposite, Nicolas Jarry, who could claim a good run on the Parisian ocher and usually so placid, went off the rails. Without a big crack of course – a single ball thrown in the air – but his 51 unforced errors speak for themselves. “He played well. Congratulations to him! It’s very difficult to play against an audience against you. I’m not going to comment on what happened before the match,” the Chilean quickly said to the few Spanish journalists who came to meet him.
It must be said that the applause for each of his direct errors could border on disrespect. “Perhaps for you it’s disrespect, for me it’s not,” Corentin Moutet will respond at a press conference. “Tennis is evolving. There is more and more atmosphere in tennis stadiums, with a younger audience. (…) The more atmosphere, the better,” he concludes. We can say that in this regard, the 25-year-old Frenchman was served!
