We spent the last couple of weeks in France with my parents visiting Normandy and Paris. We will have a couple of posts about our adventures coming up, but first a quick post about our last two days in Paris attending the French Open.
Although we attended one day of the US Open in 2000, this definitely felt like more of an event. Roland Garros is not technically in Paris, it's just outside the city and was an easy 35 minute ride on the metro. The days we attended were the first two days of the tournament and our tickets gave us access to the 12 outer courts, and the third-largest of the named courts, Court Simonne-Mathieu. We arrived before play even started on the first day. So early, in fact, they hadn't even written all the names on the men's and women's brackets (128 names each):
Here is part of the same board on the morning of the second day with the previous day's results already noted:
The first match we watched was a women's match between Taylor Townsend of the US and 19th-seeded Gabine Muguruza of Spain. It was difficult to decide who to root for, especially because Muguruza's father is Basque (her mother is from Venezuela), so we were just looking for a good match. While it wasn't a great match, Townsend took the first set 7-5, which meant we got to see three sets, which Muguruza won fairly easily 5-7, 6-2. 6-2.
Our second match was a men's match between 37-year-old Nicholas Mahut of France and 26-year-old (and 16th seeded) Marco Checchinato of Italy. Even though it seemed like an easy win for the Italian, we were looking forward to this match because we expected the crowd to be really into supporting the home-country player. When the match started, it looked like it would go as expected. It took about 10 minutes for Cecchinato to go up 4-1 and he easily won the first set 6-2. In the second set, Mahut played much better, and the crowd really started to get behind him with frequent chants of NIC-O, but neither player could get a service break and Cecchinato won the tiebreak (8-6) to go up two sets to love. Mahut continued to play well, and finally got a break late in the third set to go up 5-3. But, serving for the set, he was immediately broken himself, and we expected that the wheels might come off, but instead he broke again and won the third set 6-4.
From there, Mahut really seemed to take control, and with the crowd very vocally behind him, completed his comeback from two sets down to win 2-6, 6-7, 6-4, 6-2, 6-4! Definitely the match of the day and a very exciting three hours of tennis.
By the way, Mahut, who qualified as a wildcard entry, has already won his second round match over 35-year-old Phillipp Kohlschreiber of Germany (6-3, 6-3, 6-3). His third round opponent will be Leonardo Mayer, an unseeded 32-year-old from Argentina so maybe his run can continue for another round.
After that, we were excited to watch Venus Williams play against the number 9 seed Elina Svitolina of Ukraine, but after a few minutes, it was really hard to watch because Venus is suffering from a medical condition and other than when the ball is in play, moves on the court like she is 68 (78?) not 38. Since we had already watched over five-and-a-half hours of tennis, we decided to call it a day.
Back the next day, we saw another Frenchman, Richard Gasquet, defeat Mischa Zverev (both unseeded) in straight sets, 6-3, 6-4, 6-3. We then watched a decent men's match between 24th-seeded Stan Warwinka of Switzerland and Jozef Kovalik of Slovakia. Warwinka has won a couple of majors and clearly expected this to be an easy match. He won the first set very easily (6-1), but Kovalik showed a lot of poise in the second set and won a tiebreaker (7-3) during which Warwinka was warned for "racquet abuse." Unlike Mahut the previous day, however, Kovalik could not keep it up and fell pretty easily 6-1, 6-7, 6-2, 6-3.
After that match, we decided to go check out a match on the outer courts. Those courts, which are numbered 1 and 4-14 are open to everyone, and range in size from pretty large to tiny (literally like 100 seats). We went to one of the latter and got a close up view of an American qualifier Tennys Sandgren and his Moldovan opponent, Radu Albot:
First, I have no idea if the American pronounces his name "tennis," but it is a pretty funny name for a tennis player. Second, it was interesting to watch Sandgren talk to himself (and berate himself) between points. While we only saw the first-set tiebreak and second set, both of which Albot won, it was clear that Sandgren was a bit out of his depth (he ultimately lost 7-6, 7-6, 3-6, 6-1).
And, that was it for our French Open experience. It was really fun, and we would consider doing it again, but would definitely not go without tickets to one of the three main courts. From what we saw, the people who only had access to to the outer courts spent a lot of time standing in line waiting for a change-over (and a seat to be open) so they could get into a match, and even now we lack the patience to do that all day.
Hasta pronto,
Jeff and Shana
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