The Best Thing I Saw at Roland Garros Today: Home hope Moise Kouame breaks through

If you were wondering who Moise Kouame’s favorite player is, he didn’t waste much time giving you a clue on Tuesday. When the 17-year-old closed out the first set over Marin Cilic in a tiebreaker, he put his right finger behind his ear, lifted his head, and asked the Roland Garros crowd—his home crowd—to show their local teen some love.

Remind you of anyone? While Kouame is a native of the Paris suburbs, and Richard Gasquet is his coach, his tennis idol is Novak Djokovic. Kouame is so enamored of the the Serb’s famous ear celly, he says he does it even when he’s practicing.

“When I’m alone and no one’s there, when I do a good thing, I’m like this,” Kouame told Tennis Channel’s Prakash Amritraj with a laugh, as he put his finger behind his right ear to demonstrate.

Fortunately, Kouame has absorbed some other, more important lessons from Djokovic’s game. On Tuesday, he showed off what he had learned at exactly the right time.

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Despite the best efforts of the packed house in Court Simonne-Mathieu, Kouame went down 15-40 while serving at 4-5 in the first set—double set point for Cilic. Twice in the next rally, Cilic seemed to have it won; but twice Kouame slid—he’s already an expert slider—to his forehand side and managed to retrieve the ball from behind his body, before Cilic made an error. After demonstrating his defensive chops, Kouame saved the next set point with a calmly aggressive down-the-line backhand.

Both of those plays—the sliding forehand gets, the fearless backhand down the line—were straight from the Djokovic playbook. Kouame would go on to crack another backhand winner on a crucial point in the first-set tiebreaker, and win the match going away, 7-6 (4), 6-2, 6-1.

The victory was Kouame’s first at a major, and made him the youngest man to win a round at a Slam since 2009—the year he was born. At 6’3, with lots of foot speed and racquet-head speed, he looks like a suitably promising addition to the new crop of ATP contenders, which includes Rafael Jodar, Alexander Blockx, and Martin Landaluce.

For all of Kouame’s physical skills, it was his mental approach that may have impressed the most. Where many players his age go through wild mood swings, he stayed even-keel. He says he’s a “really chill guy” who likes F1 and music. But he’s obviously not afraid to court controversy.

“French rap is the best, let me say it,” he declared to Amritraj.

After his win, Kouame was asked how he kept his cool in his big-stage debut. I liked his reasoning.

“Training,” he said. “I put a lot of hours into training. If I play and lose, it’s OK, I have other tournaments.”

“I was well-prepared, the tactics were good. I had my team, and the crowd behind me.”

Why worry when you’ve put in the work, you’re hitting the ball well, and you trust your coaches? Even if you lose, you know you’ve done everything you could do. That’s an attitude, if he can keep it, that may take him far.