“I’ve been less strong for 18 years”, fatalistic Monfils after his defeat in the quarter-finals

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This is a remark that we often make with Gaël Monfils. How can a player who is sometimes so incomprehensible on the court be so lucid and informed about the analysis of the game itself?

Launched like a shell after coming back two sets to nothing against Matteo Berrettini, he was scuttled in three racquet strokes while leading 30-0 on his fifth set entry service game. Twenty minutes later, he returned to the locker room, as against Andy Murray at Roland in 2014.

“Let it pass once and that’s it”

Cold response from the Frenchman, even harder on himself than a bad joke from the FFL: “Once again, I failed to make the right decision, to manage the momentum well and to be able to climb a mountain. On arrival, once again I am less strong… I am less strong tennistically, physically, mentally. Yet I am fine! But I was less strong once again and I have been for eighteen years.

Like us, he feels like he’s lost this match 100 times already: “A lot of effort to lose as usual. So what I remember is “as usual”. And we will have to continue to work to continue to put ourselves in these positions. By the time I’m hopefully in that position again, it’s up to me to do something different. I feel like I say that every time, but unfortunately my goal is to try to get back into these positions as much as possible, hoping that one day it will pass. »

Tenth quarter for two halves

It was the tenth Grand Slam quarter-final disputed by Gaël Monfils, who only qualified twice for the semi-finals, a frightening statistic that tells some limits.

“At some point, it may pass, refuses to despair the seeded number 17 in Australia. We will no longer win 20 Grand Slams, but we want one. At 35, 36, 37, 38… Let it pass once, and that’s it. But I fall. It’s up to me to try to get up. In any case it’s my will, maybe I’ll never get there. The opportunities are going to be more and more rare, and this one was beautiful.


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