Richard Williams discovers a spirit that fuels the passions of players and spectators alike at Roland Garros
NO ONE who visits the Stade Roland Garros for the French Open feels quite the same about any other tennis tournament again. The warmth, the light, the smells, the sublime geometry of clay-court tennis, the proximity of central Paris and the annual first-round frisson as Mary Pierce removes her cardigan to reveal this year’s frock all contribute to the genial impression. But the tournament’s biggest advantage is the lightness of its spirit.
Whereas Wimbledon views its champions as extras in the narrative of its grand tradition, and the spectators as privileged to glimpse that heritage for a brief and expensive moment, the French Open recognises that the players and the people are its tradition. The All England Club thinks that you just change the bulbs and the light show goes on. Roland Garros wants you to enjoy the fireworks.
The difference of emphasis is symbolised in Paris this week by a static exhibit confronting fans as they eat their ice- creams and study the giant scoreboard in the sunlit concourse between the centre and No 1 courts. Mounted in a perspex case at the heart of the stadium, the Davis Cup symbolises the tournament’s past and present, metaphorically overshadowing even the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen – which will be awarded on Sunday, along with a cheque for about 350 000, to the 100th winner of the women’s singles – and the men’s equivalent, the Coupe des Mousquetaires. Quite simply, Dwight Filley Davis’s great silver bowl is the reason the people are here in the first place.
It stands in the middle of an open circle formed by bronze statues of the Four Musketeers – the bounding Jean Borotra, the dashing Henri Cochet, the elegant Jacques Brugnon and the cool Ren Lacoste – who first brought it back from the United States in 1927, at their fourth attempt. Its presence this week also celebrates last year’s victory by their Davis Cup successors, Arnaud Boetsch, Cdric Pioline, Guy Forget and Guillaume Raoux, who, under Yannick Noah’s captaincy, beat the Swedes.
Since tennis’s bizarre scoring system is allegedly based on the financial system of 14th-century France, they are perhaps entitled to make a fuss. And when, a year after the original Musketeers’ jour de gloire, a new venue was required to hold the crowds expected for the defence of the title, three Parisian clubs – including Stade Franaise, which had held the world’s first clay-court tournament – joined forces to create a venue on eight hectares to the south of the Bois de Boulogne. They named their stadium after Garros, a first world war flying ace and a member of Stade Franaise before he was shot down and killed in 1918.
After successfully hosting the team event, the stadium became the home of the French championships, which had been founded in 1891, 14 years after Wimbledon and 10 years after the US tournament. Since settling at Roland Garros, with its three variously shaped show courts and a dozen others la campagne, the French Open has become synonymous with the dusty, gruelling, absorbing rallies of tennis on clay.
Its heroes and heroines are many, and the women are being celebrated with particular enthusiasm in their centenary year, which coincides with the early blooming of a new generation of very disparate teenage talents, led by Martina Hingis, Anna Kournikova and Venus Williams.
Their ancestor was Franoise Masson, who won the 1897 women’s title wearing a ruched blouse, long skirt and jaunty hat. Among the major figures separating Mlle Masson from Steffi Graf, who won her fifth French championship last year, are Chris Evert, holder of a record seven titles at Roland Garros, and Suzanne Lenglen, who won six times in the 1920s before becoming the first player to turn professional.
Like Lenglen, who is commemorated not just in the cup that bears her name but in a spectacular third show court opened in 1994, Roland Garros embraced professionalism long ago. By comparison with Wimbledon, where only one commercial logo is visible inside the precincts, the large boards around the show courts in Paris are blazoned with the devices of sponsors, albeit rendered in a uniform green-and-black colour scheme that minimises the offence to the eye.
The avenues are lined with booths where passers-by can select their Nike footwear or inquire about holidays on St-Barthelemy. As with Wimbledon, there is no shortage of opportunities to buy event-branded goods: a tin of Roland Garros tennis balls, a clay- coloured sweatshirt, a stylish green coup- vent. Yet there is no sense of a hard sell. And there is, above all, a feeling that the items on sale do not include this tournament’s soul.