From our special correspondent in Bercy,
Almost disappointing end of the evening Thursday at the Accor Arena in Bercy. It was barely 11 p.m. that this brave Carreno-Busta was already parking the camper van, thrashed by the very American Tommy Paul (cap backwards, Californian skateboarder’s quickdraw, exaggerated forehand à la Jim Courier). Fortunately, the RATP only runs its metros between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. these days, otherwise we would have almost come home early. Nothing to do with the day before, when the fiercest had carried Corentin Moutet until 3:03 am, precisely. As Ségolène would say, it’s time to think about putting tennis on prime time and not in the middle of the night, even for men.
Sleepless night for Moutet
We laugh, but ask Coco Moutet for her schedule, who had barely 16 hours of rest before returning to the court Thursday evening, at 7:30 p.m. “I fell asleep at 5:30 am, well I wasn’t even sleeping, I was just thinking about the game, I had taken coffee to keep myself awake so I couldn’t sleep, it was rather micro-nap by microphone -siesta. I tried to do as usual, have my tennis warm-up, physical, respect the meals… I couldn’t eat after my match yesterday, everything was closed. It was really complicated, it’s one of the first times it’s happened to me, so there you go, it’s sure that when I woke up, I wasn’t fresh. Not really aches, it was more basic fatigue”.
Three times nothing, to be honest. A few micro-seconds late on starts, movements a bit heavier, defensive chips that arrive a shot earlier, and an honorable but logical defeat against a player of the caliber of Tsitsipas, who had been able to rest his horses from mid -day, Wednesday (6-3, 7-6). Note that the French, dropped by the Fédé who just sweetened her trainer, could have put a cartridge or two to the organization, at least for fun. But the same thing happens at Bercy as elsewhere: we play later and later, and so much the worse for sporting equity or the interest of the spectators, who have a life the next day, in general.
Spectators left to fend for themselves at Roland
Thus, at Roland-Garros, tourists were able to discover the charm of being released into nature at 2 a.m., without a metro on the horizon. 20 minutes, like many media, had echoed taxis rarer than a tricolor player in the second week, when they did not offer races at prohibitive prices for a few kilometers. We also wonder if the brave spectators of the Acapulco tournament had not been luckier, last February, when Zverev raised his arms at 4:54 in the morning, record broken, expecting worse. At this hour, life resumes and public transport with, finally.
“As an organizer we know it can happen. We never know the duration of the matches, if there is an abandonment it makes a hole, if a match lasts an hour there is a lead, tries to justify Marc Gicquel, sports director of the Rennes tournament. It’s still extremely rare that there are so many consecutive matches lasting three hours in an indoor tournament. Afterwards, TV has its demands. She wants a flagship match in the evening, the last French in the running, that’s a lot of parameters to fit together.
We would be tempted to answer that the broadcasters have a good back. It is the circuit itself which seems to have embarked on a race to the shallot of who will manage to offer 24 hours of tennis in a row or not far, even if certain measures have been introduced to avoid infinite matches. in Grand Slam. For example, nobody asked Roland-Garros for anything other than a roof and, if necessary, projectors to be able to finish the matches at the end of the afternoon, and now we find ourselves with sessions American-style nightclubs that offer endless days.
When is 24 hours of tennis in a row?
What represented a questionable peculiarity of the US Open, where half of the spectators are fired halfway through the match to return before dawn, has become the norm, without really seeing who wins, apart from the organizer and his double ticket office. 154,000 tickets sold for the 2022 edition, 3,000 more than in 2019, the record year at Bercy, rejoiced Cédric Pioline, new boss of the Bercy tournament, before the first racket shots.
Those who accompanied Coco Moutet until an indecent hour, were they always delighted to have shared a privileged moment with tennis, when it was necessary to find a way to return home, in the cold Parisian night autumn? We almost asked Morgan Parra, randomly seen in the crowd. By the time we came back to settle, the former scrum-half of the XV of France had disappeared. Here’s at least one for whom it didn’t sting on waking.