There is no denying it, some colleagues have mastered tennis like the back of their hands. In the middle of the third set, while Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Carlos Alcaraz engage in a fight for which it is still difficult to predict the outcome, one of them swings, serene: “P2H, it always delivers a good fight, but in the end it loses. »Paul-Henri Mathieu likes that. Of the Paris-Bercy Masters 1000 wild cards, Herbert was arguably the most questionable on paper, given recent disappointing results.
But he knew how to wake up to do better than piss off the young Spaniard, already impressive from the top of his 18 years although still irregular, and to afford an encouraging defeat (7-6, 6-7, 5-7), this which is not nothing when one is French. We will not forget the first two match points brilliantly saved by P2H, just as we can not forgive the two double faults to finish. He blamed himself to death when he came to a press conference.
“The end is catastrophic. After two and fifty-one hours of a very good fight, where it’s a great tennis match, where I’m not far from taking the advantage. It was a great game, and to finish it the way I finished, it’s terrible. “
Pierre-Hugues, profession: magnificent loser
To believe that P2H is due to its reputation as a magnificent loser, which it comes to maintain a little more after having laid solid foundations during the last two editions of Roland-Garros, to name only its defeats against Zverev and Sinner (future opponent of ‘Alcaraz, by the way). “This game looks a lot like the season I did, with a lot of important games where I missed very good results against very good players. Match point against Sinner, and against Manna at the US Open, I led two zero sets with a break [rire]… But I will instead hold my tennis level for two and fifty-one hours. “
Indeed, we recognize in Herbert a very good level of play and a certain abnegation – with the help of an audience in Davis Cup mode – each time the future terror of the circuit went to take his service. Too bad the last station wagon sounded the death knell for defeat.