NEW YORK—“I love watching Monfils, but he’s a knucklehead”: these words were stated, in disgusted admiration, by a reporter sitting in the row behind me in the U.S. Open press room today.
81: Number of winners hit by Gael Monfils in his five-set, 4 hour, 48 minute loss to Juan Carlos Ferrero.
81: Number or errors made by Monfils in the same match.
“Maybe something is missing upstairs.”—Monfils, in his post-match press conference.
When Gael Monfils arrived on tour, fresh from almost winning the boys’ Grand Slam as a junior, he would look into the crowd between points. It wasn’t the generalized, target-less, thousand-mile stare that most players have perfected. The teenage Monfils, with a wide-lidded look of concern on his face, stared you right in the eye.
He doesn’t do that anymore. He also doesn’t rap to himself between points or beat his chest after winning the first game of a match. Nonetheless, he remains as aware of the audience as ever. And he remains as much an entertainer as he does a tennis player.
Today’s schedule, which featured Monfils second up on Armstrong and his countryman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga third up next door on the Grandstand, provided me with an opportunity to try to answer a question I’ve asked myself for a long time: Does my enjoyment of the flair and athleticism of these two Frenchmen outweigh my frustration with their inability to do anything significant with it? Put another way, do I like watching them or not?
It turned out to be a good day to ask this question, at least in the case of Monfils. His five-set loss to Ferrero was classic La Monf in every conceivable way. Here's a few of them:
—Up 4-3 in the first set, but down game point, Monfils decides to dive for an easy volley when he could have stood still and reached it. He misses the volley, loses the game, and loses the set.
—Down a break in the second set, Monfils finally grows visibly frustrated. He lets loose with a series rifled forehands that Ferrero can only stare at. Monfils wins the second.
—In the all-important third-set tiebreaker, Monfils plays measured but creative tennis and watches as Ferrero implodes at the end. Instead of keeping the heat on his demoralized opponent, though, Monfils moves farther back in the court and rallies passively. He loses the fourth set.
—Down 0-2 in the fifth set, Monfils stops trying. He hits his serve without bending his knees and goes for all-out winners on every shot. He wins four straight points to hold.
—Monfils plays an excellent game to get to 4-5 in the fifth, then makes two errors and concedes the match’s final game at love. After nearly five hours, he has played just well enough to lose. On the way to the net, he drops his racquet, applauds Ferrero, and gives him a broad smile and a hug. The audience members, all of them standing, have gotten their money’s worth.
Monfils is a big man who loves to play small. As far as French antecedents go, he may look a little like Yannick Noah, but he would be happier as Fabrice Santoro. He has the size and speed and leverage to attack, but he’s most comfortable roaming the court’s back reaches. He loses concentration easily and doesn’t have the killer drive to take a lead and run with it. Like another talented but less-than-fiercely-driven competitor, Marat Safin, Monfils ends up playing a lot of very close matches, and losing them.
