The crowd at Roland-Garros angered me from the start this year with its indefensible booing of Marta Kostyuk, a Ukrainian who declined to shake Belarusian opponent Aryna Sabalenka’s hand at the net. But its support of native sons Lucas Pouille and Gaël Monfils has also moved me to tears (like its support of Gilles Simon last year)—this is part of the emotional give and take of tennis. Pouille, who faces Cameron Norrie in the second round tomorrow, was once a top 10 player; his current ranking of 646 comes after injury, depression and problems with alcohol. He cried after making it through qualifying and I cried after his first-round victory.
This evening I cried again, and probably not for the last time of the tournament, when Monfils, who was cramping and could barely walk, dug deep and eked past Sebastián Báez in five sets. His miraculous comeback from 0-4 in the fifth was one for the ages. Báez, 22, should have plenty more chances. For the 36-year-old Monfils, it was midnight on more than the clock; his career seems very close to over. As he collapsed on the court in victory, wracked by a few sobs of relief and exhaustion, I cried along with him, my wife undoubtedly wondering why I save all my tears for strangers who do neat things with racquets.
You have to remember, the last few years haven’t been easy for the electrifying showman, who wept in a press conference after an uncharacteristic first-round defeat in Australia two years ago. “I’d like to stand up and tell myself that this nightmare is over but the truth is I don’t know when it will stop,” Monfils said at the time; he was on a losing streak that rattled his confidence to the core. An infinitely worse nightmare was just around the corner, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Monfils is married to Elina Svitolina, a Ukrainian tennis player, and has spoken about the strain of the invasion on their family. Svitolina herself is far more outspoken. How would the French crowd react if Monfils (or Svitolina, who is still in the women’s draw) declined to shake a Russian or Belarusian’s hand? I suspect they’d be a little more understanding of his position than they were of Kostyuk’s.