At Roland Garros,
“Coaches were trying to tell me things, I was telling them too. So we did everything and we did nothing. If we try to decipher one of the craziest victories in the history of French tennis at Roland-Garros, this spontaneous confidence from Gaël Monfils to Marion Bartoli, before leaving Central in jubilation at almost 0:30 a.m., reminds us of order. No, the success of the “Monf” over the Argentinian Sebastian Baez (3-6, 6-3, 7-5, 1-6, 7-5), after a titanic fight of 3h47, does not has nothing to do with the rational. It is far too unexpected, intense, wild and collective to be analyzed under tactical considerations. Similarly, we would totally miss the epic dimension of this night session if we immediately nuanced the scope of this feat by arguing that it is only a matter of entering the running in a Grand Slam.
“In fact, you forget that it’s the first round, you tell yourself that you’ve been through something crazy”, sums up Gaël Monfils, whose sobs in the middle of the clay court will perhaps remain as the most iconic of this Roland-Garros. And it doesn’t matter that it happened in the first week. The man with 41 winning shots, as exciting after the match as he is heroic on the Philippe-Chatrier, shared five secrets showing how this madness of May 30… and May 31, 2023 was built.
A highly feared “monstrous” adversary
If Sebastian Baez is still unknown to the general public, he was obviously the huge favorite of this meeting, given the 352 places, but also the 14 years separating him from Gaël Monfils. Between injuries and sporting hiccups, the latter had not won a single official match since August 2022 in Montreal. What’s more, the West Indian knew Sebastian Baez well. “I had trained with him last week and I found him monstrous, he reveals. It wasn’t the first round I wanted, and honestly I didn’t expect to win this match. »
That’s right, how could the young Baez (you have him?) be upset by a 36-year-old Gael Monfils who was still beaten in the first round at the Open Parc in Lyon the week before? “Since my return to the circuit, I told myself that I was waiting for Roland-Garros to win my first match, that was for sure, smiles the tricolor tennis player. Honestly, I didn’t even expect to win this game. “An opinion shared by all the Central, seen as the “Monf” was not really in it, during a first set serenely locked by Baez (3-6).
A deliberately skipped fourth set
Against all odds, Gaël Monfils begins to thrill the audience of the night session winning the next two sets (6-3, 7-5). It’s most often on the fly, and at the cost of pralines sent from everywhere near the lines. But we quickly understand that there is a physical breakdown, on the French side, with serious consequences. Sebastian Baez quickly signs a break, and we feel Monfils tempted not to hang on in this fourth round. What was it exactly? “I’m doing something very daring by dropping the fourth set because I’m tired, recognizes “la Monf”. I’m dead, I feel like I can’t take it anymore and I tell Mikael [Tillström, son entraîneur] that I need 10 minutes. In fact I needed 25 minutes! The current 394th player in the world then entertained us by developing his remarks at a press conference.
At Roland-Garros, I mentally managed to say to myself, ”No, but don’t worry, I’ll recover and I’ll fuck him in the fifth”. Can you imagine the sick person that I am. I told myself that if I did the opposite and lost 6-4 in the fourth set, I was going to take 6-1 in the fifth. If it doesn’t pass for X reasons, I’m dead. The fact is that it was a paying choice. »
At 0-3 in the fifth, Monfils thinks of his daughter
“A paying choice”, that is debatable, because Gaël Monfils has obviously not miraculously resumed his march forward from the two second and third sets, when the final round begins. On the verge of breaking, at 0-3 and as the games go by, the little Skaï (7 months) enters her thoughts. “I said to myself: ‘Damn, I still haven’t won a match since I became a dad’, whereas Elina [Svitolina, sa compagne] has just won its first tournament in Strasbourg. My daughter is in Paris and I was still going to win one. I then relaxed a little, I started to mess around in my head, to be a little less in the game. »
And the semi-finalist in 2008 Porte d’Auteuil is never more dangerous than when his attacking shots fly without the slightest restraint. We no longer list the long-line reversing wagons which then hit the bull’s eye to attack a comeback.
“Do not want to take 6-0 in the fifth set”
Before really considering this comeback, it was necessary to save a ball from 0-5, against an opponent returning everything or almost. Part of the Central has just been emptied and the euphoria of the third set’s epilogue seems like a distant memory. But when finally concluding, a priori quite anecdotally, his first game on a well-done backhand, the 36-year-old spreads his arms and sticks his tongue out, all smiles. What goes through his head then?
“I didn’t want to take 6-0 in the fifth, it was only Murray who screwed me over (in 2014). I wanted to win at least one game and unconsciously, I tell myself that if I manage to push, there is a world where there is the wind with me on the other side, and we don’t know…”
Central’s “adrenaline” carried him to the feat
Now we know, and the madman atmosphere of Philippe-Chatrier played a key role in this unlikely scenario, where the Frenchman ended up finding “unhoped-for solutions”. “It’s thanks to you, thank you from the bottom of my heart,” repeated Gaël Monfils to the public at the end of the match. “I was just holding on to the adrenaline at the end,” he says. I was asking the audience to shout and somehow being pushed like that helped me up. I had a new breath, it was a crazy kif. I said to myself “come on, we hurt ourselves again”. I took the energy from the audience and believed in myself. “From there, each point won was celebrated as a goal, with a fervor that will go down in the history of the Central.
And what about the Marseillaise, carried in unison by all the stands, at 3-4… and 11 consecutive points from Gaël Monfils? This episode literally delayed Sebastian Baez’s face-off by a few seconds, who had gradually become alone in the world at the heart of this immense enclosure… -5 to a dream backhand passing to take control (6-5). Before the apotheosis: a counter-amortization (then a delicious volley) which will definitely cost him the “mobility” of his quadris in the last game, then this new passing carried by fate / the band of the net. “It’s one of the best moments in sport I’ve ever experienced”, savors the interested party, who places this match at the top of his personal pantheon, alongside the Homeric success in five sets against Pablo Cuevas on the Suzanne Lenglen, during the 2015 edition.
How can we imagine, after such a shot of collective euphoria, that Gaël Monfils will appear again on the Central on Thursday, against the formidable Dane Holger Rune (world number 6)? “It’s cool to have the chance to play a Top 10, he simply remembers. You have to go with panache, experience and the magic of sport, you never know. I’m ready to hurt myself. And we will try to have a nice party for the second round too. “Hey, this teaser is enough to validate his presence in the evening Thursday. Because Gaël Monfils has also just done a double blow: to embellish both the results of French tennis at Roland-Garros, and that of the night sessions. And this from a simple first round.