Welcome to Court Suzanne-Lenglen, the French Open amphitheatre of heaven and hell at Roland Garros

New York Times

30-05-2025

ROLAND GARROS, PARIS — Debilitating back pain has a new cure: 10,000 people chanting your name in song, before delivering a perfect rendition of the La Marseillaise. For it to work, it needs to be administered in the fifth set of a five-hour tennis match, on one specific court.
Welcome to Court Suzanne-Lenglen at Roland Garros. If you're a French tennis player, it is heaven. If you're any other tennis player, like Jaume Munar of Spain, whose brain that chorus of 10,000 finally fileted to get a limping Arthur Fils and his ailing back over the finish line, it is hell, a maelstrom of anxiety. Every medicine has a side effect.
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'Ici Paris?' Fils asked the French faithful, when former player Marion Bartoli put a microphone to his lips at the center of the court in the afterglow of a resurrection, measured by a 7-6(3), 7-6(4), 2-6, 0-6, 6-4 scoreline.
It could not be anywhere else. Scour the globe and it's impossible to find hometown fans quite like the French on a court like Suzanne-Lenglen. It may not have the wide-open majesty of Court Philippe-Chatrier, with that 'La Victoire Appartient Au Plus Opiniâtre' quote emblazoned on the rim of the upper deck. But, as that axiom goes, if victory belongs to the most tenacious, at the French Open the vibes belong to Suzanne-Lenglen.
Judging by the daily schedule, it's clear that organizers recognize the surge a partisan crowd can provide their players, and the damage that it can do to an opponent. The tournament did not respond to a message seeking comment on whether or not this is a strategy. Fils is the project this year. He's the rising star of French men's tennis, a 20-year-old dynamo with movie-star charisma who is already the world No. 14.
Until this year, he had yet to win a match at the French Open. Twice he had played his first-round match on the third court, Simonne-Mathieu, a jewel box of an arena in the middle of a garden and lined by a greenhouse, and come away defeated. Fils owns up to the fact that his mind can drift during a match, occasionally losing his focus and his grit when matches begin to slip away.
Simonne-Mathieu has elegance to burn. It's just not a cauldron, as Fils has quickly learned. He opened on Lenglen Monday, then got another gig Friday afternoon at the place where the seats hug the court, where the fans know they can scramble an opponent's brain like a chef scrambles an egg.
Did they ever have to cook for Fils against Munar.
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After winning the first two sets in tiebreaks, Fils fell off a cliff, struggling with his balky back and cramps. In his news conference, he said that the back pain has been with him since childhood. Figuring out how to manage it is a work in progress.
He received treatment off the court during a medical timeout, then tried to survive as slowly as possible until the painkillers kicked in. All the tension of the first two sets and all those chants of 'Arrrrthur, Arrrthur…' vanished into air as he lost 12 of the next 14 games.
But then he trotted out for the fifth set, won the first point with his trademark power, and Lenglen exploded. Then he won three more, and that was a game and the cauldron was once again on the fire and Munar was the frog in a cold pot brought to heat. Fils struck back after Munar broke him to get a lead that this crowd wouldn't let stick, then played an extraordinary game at 4-4 in which he missed two cut-and-paste routine overheads but hit a cavalcade of forehand winners to hold serve. All their efforts, Fils and the fans morphing into one, culminated with that Marseillaise that held up play as Munar served to stay in the match at 4-5.
Imagine that moment of French defiance at Humphrey Bogart's Rick's American Cafe in 'Casablanca,' but a thousand times louder. The chair umpire didn't bother trying to quiet them. Then, the Lenglen crowd played its joker.
A Munar double fault at 0-30 brought a burst of cheers. But instead of roaring on and drawing a 's'il vous plaît' from the umpire, the crowd started a hissing 'shhhhhhh' that rolled and rolled and rolled. Munar pleaded with the chair umpire. Munar pleaded with Fils. Fils shrugged.
Three points later, Fils put Munar's desperate lunge for a drop shot that had rolled off a net cord into the open court. He and his throng of 10,000 had done their work. The celebration was on. Fils gave Munar a calm, appreciative handshake and then ripped off his shirt and tossed it into the crowd.
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'Unbelievable,' Fils said of the atmosphere, after three hours of cold and hot baths, massages, fluids and food. He called Lenglen 'one of the best courts of the world, if it's not the best one.'
Had he been playing anywhere else, he doubted he would have been able to finish the match, let alone win it. But not everyone felt so indebted to the citizens of Suzanne-Lenglen, especially the Spaniard whose brain had gone to goo.
'I don't want to bite my tongue,' he said in his own, when asked about what had gone down.
'I think it's a lack of respect to sing and to interrupt and here it happens a lot. The fans are here for a show, but sometimes it turns into a circus or theater.'
It should be said that there are other courts, here and in other places, that can provide players with rocket boosters. Gaël Monfils likely doesn't come back from two sets down against Hugo Dellien in the first set anywhere but Chatrier at night, a court which the 38-year-old beating heart of French men's tennis can turn into a pressure cooker like no one else.
It was packed for his second-round match under the lights, in which Monfils give fits to Jack Draper, 15 years younger and the world No. 5. Monfils was a point or a couple of them away from taking Draper the distance in the fourth set, but he couldn't quite get over the line. The Lenglen throngs can only do so much.
Corentin Moutet, the crafty lefty famous for his slices, drop shots and underarm serves — and as an occasional practitioner of the dark arts of tennis — got the benefit of landing on the Lenglen schedule Thursday. Moutet is the rare player who can turn Simonne-Mathieu's bucolics into a bear pit, as he did last year against Nicolás Jarry of Chile.
For more than three hours, he heard the chants of 'Coco, Coco…' as the 10,000 sang his nickname. They switched to bellowing 'Mooooo-tay…Moooo-tay' when the moment called for it. They even tried the 'Shhhhhhhh….' trick with Moutet on the brink of pushing his duel to a fourth set.
The only problem was that the guy on the other side of the net happened to be the greatest men's player of the modern era: Novak Djokovic. Djokovic, who usually plays on the far more cavernous Chatrier, stepped back from the baseline, smiled, resisted his tendency to troll and got busy with finishing the match.
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He chose his words carefully during his on-court interview when the 6-3, 6-2, 7-6(1) win was complete.
'I tried to stay calm on the court and it's not easy,' he said with a grin. 'I know it's a very special atmosphere.'
Later, the man who has only made a handful of visits to Lenglen the past decade said that with the crowd so much closer than in the larger stadiums he is used to, it becomes a tangible being. Spectators get more emotionally involved because they feel like they are a part of the action. That intimacy can manifest in various ways. Former world No. 4 Carolina Garcia played her last match at her home Slam there, as close to her adoring public as she could be.
'That's what makes this court, Suzanne-Lenglen, really interesting,' Djokovic said.
After Moutet was done, Lenglen tried to get it done for Leolia Jeanjean, the world No. 100, against Daria Kasatkina, a master of off-speed tennis and a mainstay of the top 20 the past three years. Again, that was too tall a task.
The effort for Fils would have to carry the day. They will likely get another chance on the weekend, when Fils takes on Andrey Rublev in the third round. Players can request court assignments, which can have varying degrees of impact. There is little doubt about where Fils will want to play.
'Sometimes they're noisy, and sometimes it's a bit annoying for the opponent,' he said. 'But this is part of life. You've got no choice.'
He recalled a match in Brazil against João Fonseca that was rough going, although Fonseca now draws febrile crowds wherever he goes. New Yorkers wreck their lungs for Frances Tiafoe. The Aussies turn Nick Kyrgios' matches into roller derbies. Even the Wimbledon crowd went into paroxysms for Andy Murray — after the points were over.
'I think that the French public is one of the best, if not the best,' Fils said. 'And that's just the way it is.'