Write about things you really know was the advice Papa Hemingway offered wannabe writers, so here goes: the French Open is still on, Wimbledon is coming up, and I’ve just read a lament by some French woman about how professional tennis and big-time sports have become ever more ubiquitous and ever more out of reach. Duh!
A former model by the name of Géraldine Maillet has made a documentary about the 2015 French Open, not exactly a stop- the-presses kind of story. It was released on DVD just as the 2016 Open began. The French Championships, as they were called before the Open era began in 1967, was my favourite tournament — Paris being Paris and the Parisian girls being, well, beautiful and easier than most. And then there was the laissez-faire attitude among tennis officials.
Needless to say, the French Open is now a very different affair. Top players are multinational corporations, marketing is a sine qua non, and if one wants to speak to a player one goes to his agent’s agent and negotiates an appointment. Everything is machine-like: the play, the way players act, their training, even the umpiring, with Cyclops overruling human error. Players are protected from prying eyes inside the locker room, and they are prevented from getting into each other’s heads by being kept apart as much as possible. Coaches, trainers, gurus and dieticians make sure of it.
Tennis is a soulless game thanks to technology and the hucksters who sell it to advertisers, who in turn sell it for big corporation dollars. Hype reigns supreme and debases the game. Everyone, with very few exceptions, looks and plays the same. The most banal questions precede and follow the matches put by hacks who are basically cheerleaders.
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