When the men’s draw came out last week, one of the few first-round matches most of us circled was Andy Roddick, quintessential American, vs. Fabrice Santoro, Frenchman par excellence. After waiting for two days and all 63 of the other first-round contests, we finally got to see the oddest of odd couples face off Wednesday night.
Roddick and Santoro are more than an opposites; they representative extreme versions of the styles and philosophies that have characterized their country’s tennis players for more than eight decades. Roddick is the ultimate first-strike artist, a preemptive missile launcher and intimidator. Santoro is the sport’s most idiosyncratic artiste.
This clash of worldviews has deep roots in the history of the game—eight decades deep, in fact. Roddick and Santoro are descendants of a much more accomplished Frano-American pair from the 1926, Bill Tilden and René Lacoste. Big Bill and the Crocodile (sounds a little like A-Rod and the Magician from a syllabic point of view, doesn’t it?) were both something unique and unheard of these days: self-made aristocrats. Tilden, born into Philadelphia society, was a middling player until his late-20s, when he dedicated himself to the sport and became world champion. Lacoste, also a son of wealth, didn’t play at all until he was 15. When he told his father he wanted to pursue tennis, dad said he would support him, as long as he became the best player in the world within five years. Lacoste did just that by studying Tilden and developing a game—unflaggingly consistent, with a wicked slice serve—with the primary purpose of beating Big Bill. By 1926, he had taken Tilden’s spot at the top.
So if French tennis players seem a little foreign, in both style and attitude, to the Stateside fan, that shouldn’t be too surprising: Their greatest forebear’s game was designed in direct opposition to an American’s. Between 1920 and now, of course, there has been no competition between the two countries: America dominated tennis for most of the 20th century, while France has been famous mostly for major-championship futility—Pete Sampras won 14 Slams; French men during the Open era have, together, won one. But a country's contribution to a sport can’t be measured in victories alone. I know, that sounds like a very French thing to say, but walking around during the early rounds of a Grand Slam these days, you realize it's true. Today at the Open, the grounds were swarmed with French players off all conceivable varieties. For any lover of tennis as we’ve always been told it was meant to be played—i.e., with a balanced game and a dash of elegance—they provided more reasons to watch than any other nation’s in town, including the home country’s.
On Court 14 you could see a young French doubles team, Jeremy Chardy and Gilles Simon, covering every crevice of the court in a few seconds. Simon is diabolical with angles from the front and back court, and while Chardy has a more Americanized game—hammer serve, full-blast forehand, and a tendency to shout “Yes!” after a winning shot—he won the first set with a perfect topspin lob. You could also have seen Simon argue a call in what I thought was a highly French way: He looked at the mark and stuck his lower lip out.
On the Grandstand you could see the return of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, the Frenchman and power baseliner who lit up the Aussie Open. His hat was still tugged sideways, but he was rusty to start and lost the first set to a journeyman. He got his jumping ground strokes in gear in the second set and cruised from there. Tsonga, compared to his more diminutive countrymen, also plays a highly Americanized Big Game, but he does it without the awkwardness that characterizes so many Americans now. The difference? Let’s call it je ne sais quoi—in other words, I don't know what. My favorite moment of the match came when Tsonga’s opponent hit an absolutely ungettable drop shot. Before it even had landed a second time, Tsonga had stopped and given him a big thumb’s up. There was something appealingly unaffected and simple about the gesture.
Over on the other side of the grounds, on Court 4, you could see the smooth all-courter Julian Benneteau duke it out with up-and-coming Croat Marin Cilic. Benneteau is another guy who looks like an actor playing a tennis player—see Haas, Tommy; Kendrick, Robert—but you could do worse than watch him if you want to learn the game. Where his opponent lurched and lunged through his massive forehand, Benneteau was the picture of balance through all of his strokes. Of particular interest was his backhand return, which is a paragon of compact consistency.
But Benneteau, at least when I was watching, exemplified another prototypical French tendency: He wilted at the crucial moment. Up a set and a break and serving at 30-30, he had a putaway volley. You could see the indecision in his face and in his stroke as he poked the ball high and wide. He was broken a few minutes later and eventually lost the set and the match.
Back on the Grandstand you could see Nicolas Mahut offer a style completely different from any of his countrymen. Mahut is a vintage serve-and-volleyer with a stiff, Eastern-grip forehand and a one-handed backhand. But he brings flair to it, of course. It comes in the form of his backhand volley, a blazing full swing that he starts way behind his head; few players today can crush this shot crosscourt so authoritatively.
Chardy, Simon, Tsonga, Benneteau, Mahut, Santoro, plus Arnaud Clement, who lost to Djokovic: You would have had a very good day at the Open on Wednesday just watching the French men. You would have rooted for a few losers, but is that what’s really important? Actually, that’s a question worth asking: Which is the more rewarding tennis philosophy, the American or the French? It could be rephrased: Is it the result, or the process, that matters more?
The differences begin early. U.S. players grow up on hard courts and learn to win with their serves. France is home to the world championship of clay, but in reality its juniors play on all surfaces—it depends on where they grow up. Promising U.S. kids are trained privately or at academies where the sole goal is to make the pros. French kids come through a centralized national system that begins with an emphasis on grass-roots instruction—teaching pros in France face a tougher certification process than their U.S. counterparts—and a commitment to mastering every aspect of the game. During matches, Americans rush between points to get to the important part, the end; the French take their sweet time. I've always thought it was indicative of something, though I'm not sure what, that the most stylishly successful players of recent years, Justine Henin and Roger Federer, are both almost French.
Of course, France's players have their faults. I’ve seen Mahut and Benneteau act sadistically toward ball kids, and while Santoro is charming, occasionally it crosses my mind, when he’s in the middle of his act, that he might just be, as we say in the States, milking it a little bit. And if the French have the drive for overall excellence, they aren’t good at winning or conquering their emotions. On the other hand, they make up for that by savoring all of the style and variety that tennis can offer—they love to play, not just win. Perhaps because of this, their pros have long careers, they enjoy their lives on tour—it’s normal to see them out together eating and drinking at night during a tournament—they show up for Davis Cup duty and are naturals on the doubles court. They also exhibit the best sense of camaraderie of any country. At the end of Richard Gasquet’s loss yesterday, I happened to look up into the stands and saw someone I recognized. It was French pro Michael Llodra, there to support his buddy, who probably never saw him. And while they’ve been known to be moody—I didn’t say rude—they can also give a good press conference. While Roddick is witty and caustic in his pressers, Santoro at his best is soulful.
Perhaps the most revealing explanation I’ve heard for the difference in the way French and Americans approach tennis came from a U.S. player who taught tennis overseas. He said that the American style was to go for big shots and accept the risk of errors. The French, on the other hand, began with the attitude that they shouldn’t make errors and built their games from there. This seems like a perfect illustration of a fundamental difference—the brash risk-taker vs. the man who honors the traditional values of the game—between worldviews, both on court and off. Which is the better system? There's no answer to that, except to say that the tennis court is the most enjoyable place—it's a stage, theater, and conference table all in one—for these two ways of the life to play out against each other.
Right now, Roddick vs. Santoro is an hour or so away. It might be close—Santoro beat him in their last match—or Roddick might put the hammer down early to avoid any potential rabbits-out-of-the-hat from the Magic Man. Either way, while they'll both be wearing—you guessed it—Lacoste, they'll be playing tennis at stylistic extremes. A fan from either country can savor that.
