Let’s start with the brass band.
That’s why Ben Shelton was caught off guard when he took the court to face France’s Hugo Gaston on Sunday. The venue was Court 14. It was a sunken stage that could become a cauldron of stifling noise and mayhem if the opponent was a native son.
“This is the first time I’ve been to a tennis match and had a band playing in the stands on my court.” Shelton said. Shelton, the 15th seed at this year’s French Open, is no stranger to raucous crowds. He played college tennis for two years at the University of Florida. He said Kentucky’s away games at Tennessee and Georgia were particularly bad.
“If you play in the SEC (Southeastern Conference), all bets are off.”
If a bet isn’t placed on campus, at Roland Garros it’s somewhere on the Seine. A band played throughout the game, bass drums pounded and brought out rhythmic applause, trumpets and horns jumped and brought the standing-room-only crowd of several thousand to its feet, shaking Shelton into as many faults and errors as possible. .
This is how tennis works at the French Open, turning a noble sport known for its manner-obsessed fans into a football extravaganza.
It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. The monarchs of Wimbledon will have none of it, and the All England Club has long set the standard for many sports. But it’s just two of the few weeks in the tennis season where tournaments remind us that sport doesn’t have to follow the norms of Victorian England.
Rowdy crowds headlined this year’s tournament (Richard Callis/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images)
Players and fans alike can have more fun.
“teaHello, they seemed to really like tennis.” said Canadian Denis Shapovalov, who received similar treatment when he played against France’s Luca Van Assche on the same court that evening. An avid fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Shapovalov is no stranger to encountering drunken and brazen crowds at sporting events.
“It was quite fun as a tennis player, even though it was against me.”
After a series of pressure cooker clashes in the early rounds, tennis players and fans are being forced to re-engage with the current rules of the game. Tennis at its best is a sport that evokes uncontrollable emotions, from awe and ecstasy to desolation and pain. Fans who are experiencing these emotions are not expected to show them until at least a certain point in time, and even then, they are not expected to show them too much.
Lines are crossed and in Paris, non-French players are the hardest hit. Belgium’s David Goffin pounced on the crowd with his cupped ears for just a few seconds after taunting France’s Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard for more than three and a half hours following his five-set win over France’s Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard on Tuesday night. He mocked me and looked sad.
Parisians have form. After knocking out France’s Arthur Rinderknech last year, Taylor Fritz put a finger to his lips, ran down the court and screamed inaudibly amid boos. “Please let me hear it!”
Goffin became more anxious.
“It’s gone too far. It’s completely disrespectful,” the mild-mannered Belgian told reporters from his home country after the game. He claimed a fan spit gum at him.
“Soon there will be smoke bombs, hooligans and fights in the stands.” He compared such behavior to that of a football fan, meaning that such behavior has no place in tennis.
Goffin returned the favor a little (Benoit Doppagne/Belga Mag/AFP via Getty Images)
World No. 1 Iga Swatek gently scolded the Philippe-Chatrier Court crowd on Wednesday for causing a scene mid-scoring as she beat Naomi Osaka in three sets in a thrilling duel.
Swiatek understands the passion of the French crowd, but tennis requires courtesy and spectators require silence, she said. But many of her colleagues, namely Frances Tiafoe, think such notions should be long gone. Reading between the lines, Swiatek mentioned a general topic, but she was really only making one point. When she went for her regular drive forehand volley in her third set against Osaka, someone screamed as she mentioned her ball. She missed her volley.
This kind of problem would not be a problem if tennis players, like almost any other sport, were constantly exposed to noise of varying heights and intensities mapped to the contours of the rally.
The sound of gasping in a vacuum is even more shocking.
“I just wanted to point out that it’s not easy for us,” Swiatek said. “The French crowd can be a bit harsh, so I don’t want to be under the radar at the moment. “I don’t know if it’s a good decision or not, but I hope they treat me like a human being.”
All of this has caused such a stir at the French Open that tournament director Amelie Mauresmo said Thursday that spectators will no longer be allowed to drink alcohol in the stands. Adjudicators and security officials were put on alert to root out disorderly behavior.
However, it is not a punishable offense for fans to react emotionally during a goal unless it is done intentionally to disrupt a specific player.
“If you throw something in black and white at a player, he’s out,” Mauresmo said. “At some point, expressing your emotions is not the same thing.”
Given the unique nature of the French Open, it’s also difficult to say whether all of this is a true referendum on the nature of spectators or the occupational hazards of being in the City of Lights for two weeks. Home advantage is as old as sports and warfare, and there is something inherently unfair about tennis. Only players from four countries – Australia, France, England and the United States – can experience home-court advantage in the sport’s most important event, the Grand Slam.
Caroline Garcia, a house favorite, also received a portrait last year (Robert Prange/Getty Images).
Everyone else has to deal with the added attraction of a home crowd (Proven impact on umpires and umpires) in tournaments that don’t mean much and offer much less prize money. The situation at this year’s competition is also a bit strange.
Rafael Nadal vs. Alexander Zverev and Swiatek vs. Osaka are not your typical first and second round matches. Fans used to see the stakes run high and emotions run high during the semi-finals and finals. When Andy Murray won his first Wimbledon final against Novak Djokovic in 2013, the entire Center Court crowd screamed loudly on match point when Djokovic’s first ball flew high and deep into the air, and were left in awe when it didn’t come out. Yes. But inside. He sent the ball back to Murray. Murray returned the favor.
Djokovic put the next ball into the goal.
The venue exploded.
Murray in the stands after winning Wimbledon in 2013 (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Corentin Mutet coach Petar Popovic made the most of the house money in his first-round match against powerful Chilean Nicolas Zari, who is advancing to the final in Rome. Last February in Chile, like everyone else, mobs of violent tennis-playing guerrillas made Moute’s life quite miserable. Popovic told the press that the French crowd wanted revenge. And they ruined Jarry for all his faults and mistakes, breaking his concentration and spirit, turning Court Simonne-Mathieu into a Roman amphitheater. Moutet won four sets, including the final set 6-0.
This encouraging support can also do a lot. The last French woman to win the French Open was Mary Pierce in 2000. A French man has not won since Yannick Noah in 1983. Other players are simply better.
Let’s get 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. International bank BNP Paribas, one of the biggest sponsors of tennis and the French Open, has included them on its payroll under the banner “We Are Tennis”. They are all decked out in white with logoed polo shirts.
“We started at the Queen’s Club for the Davis Cup match against England in 2015.” said Vincent Raymond, who was part of the five-man team on Tuesday.
“Andy Murray punished us.”
Making the melody stand out (AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias)
Raymond was joined by bandmates Julian, Brice, Nicholas and Yohann (two trumpets, drums, trombone, flugabone and emcee/conductor). Their mission, he said, is to make noise, support France and support sport. There are reserved seats throughout the stadium so you can move from court to court.
The way French tennis is going means going wherever France needs to go for the first week. Typically, French players are eliminated from the tournament after that. “Then we change our strategy,” Raymond said. “We want to provide an atmosphere of fair play. Ultimately, it is tennis. The key is to stop play before the referee says no more.”
But bands can only control what they can control. Once the crowd goes wild, all bets are off. In particular, at the jewel of the stadium, the 10,000-seat Court Suzanne-Lenglen, Argentina’s Tomas Martin Etcheverry took on rising 21-year-old Frenchman Arthur Cazaux in the first round. .
Cazaux won the first set in a hurry, then fell off a cliff and lost the next two sets. He was still getting hammered midway through the third round, had a service break and seemed minutes away from defeat. His shoulders slumped and his legs dragged.
Then, when Cazaux came back onto the court after his shift, the crowd was bigger than it had been all day, with a lot of help from the band. Cazaux’s friends, sitting just above him at the back of the court, exchanged chants and arm pumps with fans on the other side of the court like they had been practicing for months.
Etcheverry took a few deep breaths and served.
wrong.
More chants. More screaming. Short chorus.
Another mistake.
Within minutes, the crowd gave Cazaux a break. He couldn’t hold his serve, so they came up with another serve for him.
“I took a second breath because of the crowd,” Cazaux later said. Thanks to them,” he said. “I like this atmosphere.”
He then refrains, “It’s like a football game.”
Etcheverry said the atmosphere was just as difficult.
““I played a lot against French players,” he said. “Every moment is difficult.”
Alas, it wasn’t hard enough. Cazaux went down in four sets, and the crowd screamed until the dying moments, and then several more.
The band checked the schedule and moved to another court.
(Top photo: AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias)
