RG17 Highs and lows: #16, Wildcards behaving badly

Some stars passed on playing in the French Open, while others weren't allowed in. You know all their names. What matters is what took place inside and outside the lines in Paris. On the heels of a fairly predictable and alternately off-the-chain major event, here are the thoroughly vetted, unequivocal–or entirely subjective–best and worst moments from the 2017 French Open.

See No. 17 here.

16

Bad form by a pair of homegrown French Open wildcard entrants earned the French Tennis Federation a bit of friendly fire early on in the event, though it was noticeably surmounted by the mid-major to business-end dramatics playing out in the heat of actual battle on court.

Meet Maxime Hamou–not that you haven't heard of him already–a French wild card most notorious not for his shots in his brief Roland Garros excursion but rather for repeatedly attempting to kiss a reporter as she interviewed him.

Headlines rightly scandalized the incident, also noting most everywhere that the mic-wielding Maly Thomas is "female." That's hardly to say that a male TV reporter shouldn't consider such a thing a similar offense. Unwanted advances are precisely that—unwanted, and abusive–regardless of who's on which end of the episode.

It was certainly a ridiculous, and shameful scene. Thomas later said that she wanted to punch Hamou. To the French federation's credit, the tournament revoked Hamou's credential soon after the incident. To his tardy credit, Hamou expressed his apologies via a statement.

Separately, Laurent Lokoli—a 22-year-old French wildcard ranked No. 318—took on Martin Klizan in a first-round bout. Lokoli refused to shake hands after losing in five sets, feeling that Klizan had faked an injury to obtain medical timeouts.

Lokoli, feeling disrespected, blamed his vanquisher's "attitude" as to why he didn't shake on it—a shut-it-down solution that truly doesn't solve anything on tour.

In short: These guys have growing up to do. Here's hoping that they will learn a lot from these controversy-inducing, desultory experiences.

Follow Jon on Twitter @jonscott9.