It’s time tennis had some new star players
Roland Garros in a chill damp October can’t compare to Roland Garros in a Parisian spring or early summer, but to their credit the French Tennis Federation has managed to stage its championship.
At the moment of writing, perforce early and some way before the finals, it has so far been a success. Covid has been defied, a small number of spectators have been admitted, and good tennis has been played. The atmosphere has not been what it should be, but a little closer to that than was the case in New York last month.
Sadly but predictably British interest in both the men’s and women’s singles was over very quickly. We’re accustomed to that, of course. Andy Murray is the only British player this century to have reached the final in Paris. Tim Henman got once to the semi-final, but no British player has won a singles title at Roland Garros since Sue Barker did in 1976. Fred Perry was the last British man to win the title there; that was in 1935 when George V was on the throne.
Sadly there can surely now be no chance of Murray taking that honour from Perry as he did at Wimbledon eight years ago. Determination may keep him going for a bit yet, but after lay-offs and operations one can’t even hope that he will return to being what he was. As any rugby three-quarter in his thirties will ruefully admit, the first thing that goes is speed. It was Murray’s speed of foot that enabled him to make astonishing returns and keep points going when they seemed to be lost.
The years may be catching up with his great rivals too. Federer will be in his fortieth year if he returns to the courts next season. Rafa Nadal and Stan Wawrinka are thirty-five, Novak Djokovic is thirty-three, the same age as Murray. It won’t – surely can’t? – be long before it will be twilight rather than limelight for these five champions, who have dominated the Slam tournaments for so many years. Rafa and Novak are admittedly holding Sport’s Grim Reaper at bay and remain the best two in the world, but for how much longer?
These players position at the top is, of course, due to their continuing excellence. But it is undoubtably helped by the fact that the generation immediately below them– say the twenty-five to thirty-two group – has been mostly disappointing. Several have promised much and delivered little, Grigor Dimitrov being an outstanding example.
The Austrian Dominic Thiem is the exception. He has been runner-up in the Australian Open and twice at Roland Garros, he won his first Slam title at the US Open in New York last month. Some might argue that fortune favoured him; Nadal gave New York a miss and Djokovic was disqualified for inadvertently hitting a line-judge with a ball fired away in a moment of anger and frustration. Still, Thiem has been rapping on the door of the exclusive club of winners of Slams for a couple of years. He deserved admission to the club and he showed the necessary strength of will to come from two sets down to beat his younger opponent, Alexander Zverov, in the final.
Zverov himself belongs to a younger age-group and may well win a Slam someday. He has a huge serve, nevertheless often seems defensively-minded, playing so far behind the base-line that line judges are more in danger from a swinging racquet than from a wildly struck ball. He made few friends this week by venturing on to the court when, after a feverish night, he might have been suffering from Covid. Then, after losing to the 19 year-old Italian Jannik Sinner, he told his Press Conference that he was so ill he maybe shouldn’t have played. One wondered if he would have mentioned his health if he had won. As it was, his self-pitying words took some of the gloss of what was the biggest victory of young Sinner’s career to date.
Sinner went on to lose to Rafa in the quarters, but ran him close enough in the first two sets to have one thinking, and rather hoping, that he may be challenging for a Slam title in a couple of years. The other young star to twinkle brightly this week is the 18 year-old Frenchman, Hugo Gaston, an engaging player, only 5 ft 8 inches in height, with a fondness for daring and deftly-delivered drop-shots. He beat Wawrinka in a delightful match and then took Thiem to five sets. His game may not translate well to grass or fast hard-courts, but it would be no surprise if he becomes the darling of Roland Garros, perhaps even succeeding where previous darlings, Richard Gasquet and Gael Monfils, have disappointed.
If the Men’s game is still dominated by Nadal and Djokovic – which will be the case even if either has lost his semi-final before this article is published, the Women’s is in a state of flux. Serena Williams is, not surprisingly, in decline (though one still suspects that on a good day she is capable of beating anyone). Two of the top-three ranked players, Ashleigh Barty and Naoimi Osaka gave Roland Garros a miss, and Simona Halep was surprisingly overwhelmed by the 19 year-old Polish player Iga Swiatek. The truth is that for five or six years now, if Serena didn’t win one of the four Slam tournaments, pretty well anyone might.
Consequently for the general tennis public who mostly watch only the Slams, few of the top women are household names. It’s very different from the days when Serena and Venus were in their prime, and the two Belgians, Justine Henin and Kim Clijsters, were popular champions. Different too from the time of Steffi Graf, Monica Seles, Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert and Yvonne Goolagong, when the women were as well known as the men. It would be nice to think such popularity will return to the women’s game, sadly it still seems we’ll have to wait a bit for it to do so.