4 days ago
How can the French find joi at Roland Garros again
The Philippe Chatrier, a steely colosseum of right angles outside is anything but steely inside. Fifteen thousand people are losing their minds. Roland Garros 2025's last surviving French player — a wild card ranked world no. 361 about whom there is still no information on her player page (neither place of birth, height, weight, playing style or name of coach) had just knocked out her second-successive seeded player. If it was no. 3 Jessica Pegula on Monday, Wednesday was reserved for no.6 Mirra Andreeva, a rising star of women's tennis, who melted in the Chatrier's heat and noise.
The La Marseillaise was sung in one stand, national flags were being waved in the other, there was chanting and booing. Lois Boisson became the first French player since 2016 and Jo-Wilfred Tsonga to reach a Roland Garros semi-final, which is where her run ended. Boisson is a scrapper from nowhere who went unnoticed over the first week of an event which had witnessed the disappearance of more celebrated French players from the draw. This after the hosts have 10 men and two women in the top 100. When she took down Pegula, nobody even knew who she was.
But the absence of the French at the business end is a distressingly annual Roland Garros custom. 'The last one who went to the final is me… 88' says Henri Leconte, a very 21st century Mousquetaire, dressed in an old-style bomber jacket. 'We need an Italian - we need someone who can play on clay.' Leconte is not being glib when he's talking of Italian-origin players for France but rather focusing on clay court expertise. 'We need to organise ourselves and with our juniors to go and see different academies like (Riccardo) Piatti and Rafa's…'
When someone standing behind us suggests 'Patrick?' referring to Patrick Mouratoglu, Leconte is quick to respond 'Patrick, no…. this is not on clay, first of all most of his sport is on hard court. And I think we need to go and see how the best one for clay - which is Spain - how they prepare themselves for Roland Garros.'
He is emphatic, 'To win at Roland Garros you need to practice on clay, you need to play on clay almost all year and come back…' The French love for clay as a natural surface that is both demanding and forgiving is to be sensed in Leconte's incantation, 'Because we know that the best surface to work on, to be physically strong on is clay. If you move well on clay, you move well everywhere. If you play well on clay, you play well everywhere - different techniques, different mentality.'
It is as if Leconte is asking for a sustained devotion to excelling on clay as the French players' path to the Roland Garros grail. Are the French spending too much time in a year on alien surfaces aka hard court? He says, 'If you want to win on Roland Garros you have to practice on clay, if they don't like the surface, if they don't like to play on Roland Garros, if they don't like the pressure…' Himself a consummate 'acteur' across his home courts (three semis to go with the one final), Leconte says 'maybe' the French players find playing at Roland Garros too daunting, but adds, 'but the pressure is yourself…' because in reality, ' it's not there. But our players, they have to train, train, train.'
We're standing in a hall beneath the Tenniseum as part of the Emirates Legends Trophy media meet at an event where 12 men and 12 women compete in an exhibition competition. The good and great of French tennis are around and Guy Forget, former world top 5 pro and successful Davis Cup captain points out to the era that has gone. 'When Rafa won 14 times here, we had four players in the top 10 overs. When Rafa didn't win, it was Roger and when Roger didn't win it was Novak and of course you get the leftovers.' This year, injuries to the two top 20 Frenchmen this year - Arthur Fils and Ugo Hubert - have been, he said, 'well, a bummer.'
Frenchwoman Tatiana Golovin, who made world no. 12 and won two WTA titles before injury curtailed her career, has a different take on where the French game is at. At too much. The French Tennis Federation (FFT) supports promising juniors till the age of 18 without, many believe, the pressure to produce results. 'There's many issues,' Golovin said, 'The fact that the FFT gives so many opportunities, so many things to kids that they don't develop basically that hunger or the ability to sacrifice, because everything is kind of given to them.'
The lack of a leader or a role model she said had caused a gap in trying to pull in a new generation of kids for the better part of a decade, 'motivating everyone to go up - that's an issue too.' Her summary of French tennis is simple, 'Because if there's not enough work done on a daily basis and if you're not going forward, you're going backwards.'
The sudden resurgence of the Frenchmen in the upper orders of the ATP rankings has incited much optimism, like Forget says, 'A guy like Fils has a great game for clay - this was his first year at RG. Next year he will come back with good physical ability and he'll hopefully be able to be in the second week and why not in the semis.'
M. Forget and les hommes have reason to be upbeat. But in the background there's an echo of a few polite 'excusez-mois' in the air. From a trio of past French Grand Slam title winners. Their names: Marion Bartoli, Amelie Mauresmo and Mary Pierce. And perhaps Boisson will one day follow in their footsteps. The French even have a saying for this: cherchez la femme. Look for the woman.
