Let's start with the marching band.
That's what caught Ben Shelton by surprise when he took the court on Sunday to face Frenchman Hugo Gaston. The venue was Court 14: a sunny setting that can very quickly become a suffocating cauldron of noise and chaos when the opponent is a native son.
“This is the first time I have come to a tennis match and have a band playing in the stands of my court.” Shelton said. Shelton, the No. 15 seed at this year's French Open, is no stranger to rowdy crowds; He played two years of college tennis at the University of Florida. Road games at Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia were especially unpleasant, he said.
“If you play in the SEC (Southeastern Conference), all bets are off.”
If betting is closed on campus, then at Roland Garros, they will be somewhere on the Seine. Throughout the match, the band continued to play, a bass drum pounding and summoning rhythmic claps, trumpets and horns blaring and lifting the crowd of thousands standing to their feet to shake Shelton into so many fails and mistakes as I could. .
That's how tennis plays out at the French Open, turning a polished sport known for its etiquette-obsessed fans into the frenzy of soccer matches.
It's not everyone's cup of tea. The overlords of Wimbledon were having none of it, and the All England Club has long set the standards for much of the sport. But these are two of the few weeks during the tennis season when the tournaments are reminiscent of a sport that doesn't have to conform to the standards of Victorian-era Britain.
Raucous crowds have headlined this year's tournament (Richard Callis/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images)
Players and fans alike could enjoy it a little more.
“TThey are really interested in this and I felt like they really love tennis,” said Denis Shapovalov, a Canadian who received similar treatment that same night when he faced Frenchman Luca Van Assche a few hours later on the same court. Shapovalov, a huge Toronto Maple Leafs fan, is no stranger to brazen, drunken thongs at sporting events, but not the ones he plays at.
“Pretty fun as a tennis player, although it went against me.”
After a series of pressure cooker matchups in the early rounds, tennis players and fans are forced to recommit to the current rules of the game. At its best, tennis is a sport that inspires uncontrollable emotions, from awe and ecstasy to desolation and pain. Fans who go through those emotions are expected not to show them, at least until a moment is over, and even then, not to show them too much.
Lines are crossed and in Paris, non-French players are the most affected. Belgium's David Goffin was pretty salty after his five-set victory over France's Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard on Tuesday night, teasing the crowd with a cupped ear for just seconds after they spent more than three and a half hours mocking him. he.
Parisians have form. Taylor Fritz ran around the court with his finger on his lips after knocking down Frenchman Arthur Rinderknech last year, shouting, inaudibly under the roar of boos, that he wanted them to “let me hear it!”
Goffin was a little more nervous.
“This is going too far, it's a total lack of respect,” the affable Belgian told reporters back home after the game. He claimed that a fan had spit gum at him.
“Soon there will be smoke bombs, hooligans and fights in the stands.” He compared that behavior to that of football fans: the implication that it simply has no place in tennis.
Goffin gave something back (Benoit Doppagne/Belga Mag/AFP via Getty Images)
World number one Iga Swiatek gently scolded the Court Philippe-Chatrier crowd on Wednesday for making noise mid-points as she prevailed in three sets over Naomi Osaka in a gripping duel.
Swiatek understands the enthusiasm of the French public, she said, but there is decorum in tennis, an expectation of silence in the audience, although many of her peers, particularly Frances Tiafoe, think that concept should have disappeared a long time ago. Reading between the lines, Swiatek, while addressing the topic in general, was actually only making one point: As she transitioned to a regulation forehand volley deep in the third set against Osaka, someone screamed as she headed for the ball. He missed volleyball.
If tennis players were constantly exposed to noises of different pitch and intensity, mapped to the contours of their rallies (as in almost any other sport), this sort of thing wouldn't be a problem.
When a gasp comes from the void, it is much more jarring.
“I just wanted to point out that it's not easy for us,” Swiatek said. “French crowds can be a bit tough, so I don't want to go unnoticed at the moment. “I don’t know if it was a good decision or not, but I hope they can treat me like a human being.”
All of this has caused quite a stir at the French Open, with tournament director Amelie Mauresmo saying Thursday that she would no longer allow spectators to drink alcohol in the stands. Referees and security officials have been put on alert to crack down on unruly behaviour.
But fans getting excited in the middle of a point, as long as it's not intentionally to discourage a specific player, is not a punishable offense.
“If you throw something black and white at a player, you're out,” Mauresmo said. “Expressing emotions, for a moment, is not the same.”
Given the unique nature of the French Open, it's also difficult to say whether all of this is a genuine referendum on the nature of spectators, or rather an occupational hazard of being in the City of Light for a fortnight. Home advantage is as old as sports and war, and there is something inherently unfair about it in tennis. Players from only four countries (Australia, France, the United Kingdom and the United States) can experience home field advantage at the Grand Slams, the sport's biggest events.
Local favorite Caroline Garcia even received a portrait last year (Robert Prange/Getty Images)
Everyone else has to make do with the extra push of the local public (and its proven effects on referees and referees) in tournaments that don't mean as much and offer far fewer prize money. The circumstances of this year's tournament are also a bit strange.
Rafael Nadal vs Alexander Zverev and Swiatek vs Osaka are not your typical first and second round matches; They are the type of occasions that fans are used to seeing in semi-finals and finals, when the danger is at its highest and emotions are most intense. When Andy Murray won his first Wimbledon final against Novak Djokovic in 2013, the entire Center Court crowd let out a thunderous scream on match point, when Djokovic's first ball flew high and deep into the air, and he let out a scream. of astonishment when it didn't land. but in. He feels the ball back to Murray. Murray returned the favor.
Djokovic put the next ball into the net.
The place exploded.
Murray in the crowd after his Wimbledon triumph in 2013 (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Petar Popovic, Corentin Moutet's coach, made the most of the house money for a first round match against Nicolas Jarry, a powerful Chilean who had just reached the final in Rome. In February, a partisan crowd in Chile, where they play rowdy tennis as well as anyone, had made Moutet's life pretty miserable. Popovic told the press that he wanted the French public to take revenge. And they did, criticizing Jarry for every foul and mistake, breaking his concentration and his spirit, turning the Simonne-Mathieu pitch into a Roman amphitheater. Moutet won in four sets, including 6-0 in the last.
This enthusiastic support cannot do much either. The last Frenchwoman to win the French Open was Mary Pierce in 2000. A Frenchman hasn't won since Yannick Noah in 1983. Other players are simply better.
Let's go back to the band.
They are part of La Banda Paname, a group of approximately 50 musicians who provide spirit and entertainment at various sporting events throughout the region. BNP Paribas, the international bank that is one of the largest sponsors of tennis and the French Open, has them here on the payroll, under the name “We Are Tennis.” They are dressed all in white, with matching logo polos.
“We started at the Queen's Club for the Davis Cup against Great Britain in 2015,” said Vincent Raymond, who was part of the five-man team on Tuesday.
“Andy Murray punished us.”
Playing a melody (AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias)
Raymond was joined by his bandmates Julian, Brice, Nicholas and Yohann: two trumpets, drums, a trombone, a flugabone and an emcee/conductor. His mandate, he said, is to create noise, support France and support sport. They have reserved seats throughout the venue, so they can jump from one court to another.
The way French tennis has fared, that means going wherever France needs them in the first week. Generally, French players are out of the tournament after that. “Then we will change our strategy,” Raymond said. “We want to create an atmosphere of fair play. After all, it is tennis. The key is to stop playing before the referee says no more.”
The band, however, can only control what they can control. Once the crowd warms up, all bets are off, especially on the Suzanne-Lenglen court, the jewel of a stadium with capacity for 10,000 people, where the Argentine Tomas Martin Etcheverry faced off against Arthur Cazaux, the 21-year-old Frenchman. years on the rise in the first round. .
Cazaux won the first set quickly and then fell off a cliff, losing the next two. He was still getting hammered midway through the third, down a break on serve and seemingly minutes away from defeat. His shoulders were slumped and his legs were drawn.
Then, when Cazaux returned to the court after a change, the crowd became louder than it had been all day, with a lot of help from that band. A group of Cazaux's friends, sitting just above the back of the court, exchanged chants and arm-wavings with fans on the other side of the stadium, as if they had been practicing for months.
Etcheverry took a few deep breaths and served.
Failure.
More songs. More screams. A short chorus.
Another failure.
Within minutes, the crowd had shown a break for Cazaux. He couldn't handle his serve, so they showed him another one.
“I got a second breath thanks to the crowd, so thanks to them,” Cazaux said later. “I love this kind of atmosphere.”
Then that chorus: “It's like a football game.”
Etcheverry said the atmosphere was very harsh.
“I play against the French many times,” he said. “Every moment is difficult.”
Unfortunately, it wasn't hard enough. Cazaux fell in four sets, the crowd screaming until the last moment, and then a few more.
The band revised the schedule and moved to another court.
(Top photo: AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias)
