Throughout 2017, we’ll discuss the themes of the season with three former players and current tennis commentators: Jimmy Arias, James Blake and Mary Carillo. Roland Garros, the venue and indigenous name of the season’s second Grand Slam tournament, is the topic of our latest conversation.
Mary Carillo: It’s always been my favorite tournament. It’s where I won my only Grand Slam title—mixed doubles, with John McEnroe, in 1977. I always like to say that it was his first major win and my last.
We had been playing together as little kids our whole lives. We lived three blocks away from each other, so we entered kind of on a lark. He was 18 and was also playing the juniors; I was 20. He was missing some school to play in the French Open. A couple weeks later he missed his graduation because he was busy getting ready for the semifinals of Wimbledon.
Jimmy Arias: I guess the word that comes to mind is disappointment. I was playing my best tennis in 1983, and that was the year Yannick Noah won the French Open. In no other year did I come close to that level of confidence.
I’d just won clay-court tournaments in Florence and Rome. In the second round of Roland Garros, I pulled a stomach muscle. I couldn’t reach over my head. I was serving underhanded and sidearm half of the time; I won a couple of matches serving 25 m.p.h. I ended up losing in the round of 16 to Guillermo Vilas.
I beat Noah at the U.S. Open later that year. I felt like that was the year, and if I was ever going to win a Slam it would have been on clay. It feels like the one that got away.
James Blake: I played Sebastien Grosjean at Roland Garros in 2002, and then later that year I played him at the same stadium in the Davis Cup semifinals. The French Open match was a tough four-setter and the Parisian fans were going crazy. I was playing on the center court against the crowd hero. I lost that day, but it was an absolute battle all the way through.
I actually broke my ankle a tiny bit during the match. I sprained it really badly and doctors told me afterwards that when it sprained, it pulled a tiny little chip of the bone off. I tied my shoe really tight just to finish the match; afterwards the ankle blew up. But the whole match was a lot of fun.
