Are we not witnessing a rare bright spot in the depressing French tennis season? Yet fallen to 276th in the world, Gaël Monfils is indeed in an unexpected state of form, this week at the Masters 1000 in Toronto. At 36, the tricolor player has just qualified overnight from Thursday to Friday for the quarter-finals of this tournament on hard courts, by overcoming without trembling (6-4, 6-4) the Australian Aleksandar Vukic.
“La Monf” is therefore on the run from his exploit in the previous round against world number 4 Stefanos Tsitsipas (6-4, 6-3). Based on his first balls (9 aces in total), as against the Greek, Gaël Monfils converted one break point per set out of seven attempts in total. “I serve better now, and my forehand is also one of the keys to my game, just like my movements”, he analyzed, saying he was happy to have been “almost 100%”.
“I feel that I can be competitive”
“It’s my first quarter-final in two years. It’s good to play again, ”savors Gaël Monfils at the same time. We must indeed go back to this same Toronto tournament in 2021 to find traces of a quarter of Masters 1000 concerning him. A few months later, he had also climbed to the quarter of the Australian Open 2022, with a terrible fight lost in five sets and 4 hours of play at the time in Melbourne against the Italian Matteo Berrettini.
Weighed down since by physical glitches, the Frenchman had in particular had to withdraw in the second round of the last Roland-Garros, after having made us dream like never before by overthrowing Sebastian Baez in a night session fire on Central two days earlier. Back from injury in the United States, he had won two victories in Washington before lining up for this Masters 1000 in Toronto. “When I’m at 100%, I feel like I can be competitive,” adds Gaël Monfils. That’s good, there will be heavy on his way in the night from Friday to Saturday (around 2:20 a.m.), with the Italian Jannik Sinner, seeded number 7.