Is there a sport other than tennis that contains so many different versions of itself, so many different worlds, within its small universe? These worlds are created, literally, at the surface level: Clay, grass, and hard courts each come with their own playing styles, their own champions and specialists, their own sounds, skills, strategies, and sneakers, and their own customs—even, in the case of how the lines are called, their own rules.
Those of us who play and follow the sport in the U.S. enjoy only a small taste of that difference. We play on unforgiving asphalt, and are rarely allowed a glimpse of the grass courts hidden behind private-club walls. As for clay, we usually settle for the green stuff, and only see the red dirt that stretches across Europe on our TV screens each spring. To go below the surface, and understand the depth of the cultural variety that tennis offers, requires a trip to Paris, and to the capital of clay that it houses, Roland Garros.
I made my first trip—it’s not an exaggeration to call it a pilgrimage—to the French Open with my family, as a fan, in 1998. I’d always loved to watch the tournament on television at home. The war-of-attrition rallies, the elegant sliding movements, the artistic slow-motion replays taken from French TV, the vehement, sometimes vicious crowd: No tournament mixes beauty with the battle the way Roland Garros does. Still, none of that prepared me for the effect that the event had when I first took it in live. For lack of a highbrow reference, it reminded me of the Star Trek episode where Kirk and Co. are transported to an alternative universe. It was like watching tennis in a mirror; everything felt the same, but in reverse.
First, there was the way the sport was played. On TV, clay-court rallies are often described as interminable by U.S. commentators. Seeing them up close, I wished they would go on even longer than they did. The elaborate Western-grip swings, the spray of red dust that flew from under a sliding sneaker, the mix of heavy topspin and delicate drop-shot touch: Here tennis, the effete sport, was hypnotically visceral.