Anyway, I saw the way Amelie Mauresmo once again crashed and burned early in the French Open (If you ask me, her record at Roland Garros suggests that she's got a real problem with her homeland, and has found a particularly public, passive-aggressive way to express it.) That got me thinking about how under-performing at Roland Garros - stinking out the joint, if you want to dispense with the niceties - is by no means merely a Mauresmo problem; it's as much a way of life for French players as is smoking 40 a day, eating stinky cheese, making jokes about gauche Americans in white tube socks and indulging in extra-marital hanky-panky for so many of their randy, fast-driving, personal-hygiene-ignoring countrymen.
The record of the French at Roland Garros is noteworthy, and not in a good way. In fact, their haplessness in the French Open is a mystery almost on the same order as why the British can't play the game they pretty much invented and brought to its apotheosis at Wimbledon. Now you could say that an American has some nerve, talking about tennis players who disappoint the home fans - pretty soon there will be*no* Americans playing in the U.S. Open, which certainly would make it impossible to criticize them.
But let's keep in mind a critical difference here: most of the American players, bless their eager, never-say-die, always-trying-to-get-better hearts, exude an odor suspiciously like Vieux Boulogne when they set foot on a tennis court. But those French players, they've got track records and rankings, they've got shots, they've got style, they've got more talent than a burlesq - ah. . .never mind that last bit.
Maybe this says it all: the most clearly gifted of French male players didn't even play Roland Garros this year; he's been thrown out of the game for testing positive for cocaine. And the weird part is that given the limp way Richard Gasquet responded to the call of the Tricolor in at least one Davis Cup tie (vs the U.S. in Winston-Salem, when he basically said he didn't feel like playing), he's probably sipping a decadently ripe, awesomely-endowed if slighlty pricey Bordeaux and utterly enjoying a pleasant side-effect of his suspension - the fact that he didn't have to play. . . Roland Garros!
So I'm going to try to stay inside the French bubble for a few days, as I get ready to leave for Paris on Saturday. That means I'll be running an official death watch and paying special attention to the creative (or simply craven) ways those Gallic stylists find to fall by the wayside in the red dirt. By my count, the French had fully 37 players entered in the main singles draws (19 men, 18 women) On this, the fourth day of the 15-day tournament, 11 of the 19 male players are out, and just four of the 18 women starters are still in the hunt. Let's do a little catching up on some of the highlights:
Nicolas DeVilder went out in five sets to Stan Wawrinka; no shame in that. Florent Serra got blasted off the court by Fernando Verdasco and had this to say: "I can't even encourage myself, because today I have the feeling that I'm at 800% of my shape, and yet I don't succeed."
Mathieu Montcourt had far more than than his second-round loss to Radek Stepanek to worry about, because he was fined a stiff $12,000 for betting on tennis. Naturally, he was asked how he felt his transgressions stacked up against those of Richard Gasquet, to which he replied:
"I mean, to my point, there is no comparison between cocaine and what I did with the betting stuff, because. . .I don't know. I would like to say that my case, it was in 2004. I bet on 20 or 25 players. The biggest bet was, I think, $3, and I lost $36, which is, to my point, ridiculous.
"Everybody is laughing, so I think this is not only my opinion. So there is no comparison between betting in 2004 - on 20 bets on Federer, which I don't have any influence on Federer, on Sharapova, on Agassi. Yeah, can you imagine? I was betting on Agassi. He stopped playing like three or four years ago."
Josselin (is that "Jesse" in French?) Ouanna put up a nice five-set win over Marcel Granollers (and you know how those Iberian dudes usually make the French quake in their LaCostes!), while Alexandre Sidorenko, a Frenchman by way of Russia, was bounced out by Marat Safin. Sidorenko cut to to the chase, analyzing the icon who sat him down: "Of course, he (Safin) still strikes the ball really well. He's an all around player. He can do just about everything. He's got one weakness: He makes mistakes."
Yep, that's a weakness all right . . .
Gilles Simon won a five-set war with Wayne Odesnik, then beat Robert Kendrick like a drum. Juan Martin del Potro killed Michael Llodra, while Arnaud Clement hammered Dmitry Tursunov and Fabrice Santoro, all hat and no rabbits these days, lost to Olivier Rochus (in what probably was Santoros's last Roland Garros).
Julien Benneteau had nothing to be ashamed of in losing to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, and for his part, the former Australian Open finalist was thrilled to win his first round before the home crowd - as this press room exchange testifies:
Q: Were you tense?
A: Very.
Q: Did the tension go away after a couple of games?
A: No, I'm still tense now. . .(laughter all around)
BTW, Tsonga showed up for his presser wearing a tie, and when he was asked to explain why, he said:
"In other sports when you come to a press conference, you have to respect, to comply with a dress code, so I thought that in tennis, too, we could show we have certain ethics. I believe it's important. We have beautiful tournaments, and we should show a bit of respect."
Adrian Mannarino got all of five games off Tommy Robredo, while Romain Jouan got eight off Andy Roddick. The French reporters asked Jouan what Roddick said to him after the match. He replied: " 'Good match.' and he told my father in the locker rooms that I was a good player. That was nice. I think it's very nice of him. I'm not sure he really believes that, but it was nice."
Aw, Romain, don't be so danged tough on yourself!
