The obsession with brand names and labels is by no means confined to the periphery of the French Open. Matches are often swayed by a player’s loyalty to distinctly French products. In 1988, Sports Illustrated described the men’s championship as a one-on-one battle between competing mineral waters. Henri Leconte “is a Perrier freak, Mats Wilander a noncarbonated Evian man. On clay, non gazeuse will win more often than not.” It certainly did in that case; Wilander crushed all the bubbles out of Leconte.
Many players would argue, however, that the court surface – pulverized brick dust – determines the winner in most matches. Generally conceded to be the most demanding tournament on the circuit, the French Open is the only Grand Slam event – Wimbledon and the U.S. and the Australian Opens are the other three – that is played on slow red clay. While there is no evidence that the 19th-century author François-René Chateaubriand was a tennis enthusiast, he might well have been describing the grueling progression of matches at Roland Garros when he wrote that although crimes are not always punished, mistakes are. Few points in Paris are won outright. Most end only after 20 or 30 strokes when one player has maneuvered another into a morale-killing, soul-destroying error. Matches routinely run on for more than three hours, and it’s not uncommon to see competitors forfeit from exhaustion and be carried off the court, their legs cramped and covered with powdery clay, looking as though they have been batter-fried.
Yet the players tend to complain less about the taxing conditions than about that which the Parisians appear to value even more than art or style – to wit, their lovely language. Since English is the universal language of the international tennis tour, players simply cannot comprehend why the French refuse to use the most commonplace terms of the game. Why, for instance, do they insist on calling the Grand Slam le Grand Chelem as if it were an august Middle Eastern potentate? Why do they refer to top-spin as life (pronounced leafed), to a tie-break as un jeu décisif, an ace as un as, a dropshot as an amorti, the net as let filet? Why, in short, don’t they simply speak English?
One year, Mark Edmondson, a burly, combative Australian, was furious when a French umpire refused to give the score in English. “I know you speak English,” Edmondson shouted. “Just tell me whether it’s my advantage or his.” The umpire feigned complete incomprehension until Edmondson called him an arrogant pig – at which point the Frenchman proved himself perfectly bilingual by slapping the Australian with a penalty for verbal abuse.
Finally, though art, fashion and the French language all must grant place of prominence to the ultimate national fetish – food! Roland Garros boasts dozens of restaurants and private dining rooms, and on every court, in eerie out-of-the-way corners, the aroma of roasting meat laces the air. The sounds of silverware on china, of Champagne corks popping and of waiters shouting orders add a curious undercurrent to the cheering crowds.
Fans who don’t care to waste time waiting for a table and consuming a four-course meal line up at the booths that sell crepes, gauffres, cheeses, yogurt, strawberries and cream, and pan bagnats. A number of peculiarly French products don’t sound especially appetizing. There are Popsicles with the brand name of Zit and an effervescent soft drink called Pschitt. But chacun à son goût.
Although spectators seem to have insatiable appetites, the players, coaches, officials and press more than hold their own. In 1991 Sogeres, le Restaurateur Official des Internationaux de France, put out a press release bragging that it had served 35,000 meals to members of the tournament’s infrastructure. This included 12 tons of vegetables, 3½ tons of fresh fruit, 11,500 yogurts, 12,000 eggs, 50,000 bottles of mineral water, 605 pounds of salmon and 121 pounds of foie gras. It forbore mentioning exactly how many bottles of wine had been drunk, but the previous year 45,000 glasses of Champagne had been consumed just at V.I.P. parties.
As Yannick Noah, the 1983 men’s French Open champion, once lamented when the bleachers remained half empty for his match, which was scheduled at lunchtime, “The French like their tennis, but they love their cuisine even more.”
For curious tourists, it isn’t so easy to separate the tennis from the food, the high fashion from the linguistic imperiousness, the artistry on court from the art off court. In the end it’s all of a piece – part and parcel of spring in Paris.
BIRTH OF THE BATHROOM BREAK
Tennis is a game of traditions, and a rich literature has grown up around the arcane origins of everything from its scoring system to its etiquette. Reaching back into the mists of time, the game’s historians have gravely discussed the precise dates when men first wore shorts, when the ball went from white to canary yellow, when the tie-break was introduced. Ah, but the humble bathroom break. . .there’s a mystery for a true scholar. When did players suddenly become so incontinent they had to race off court between points, after a set or right before an opponent served for the match? A few years ago at the French Open Marit Safin established some sort of new record by interrupting the pre-match warm-up to flee to the bathroom.
In the opinion of most experts, the 1983 US Open final between Jimmy Connors and Ivan Lendl was a watershed – or should that be a water-closet? – moment. In their pre-match commentary, CBS announcer Pat Summerall and Tony Trabert informed a national TV audience that Connors was suffering from diarrhea and would have to run off court at a moment’s notice. Some viewers might have considered this an example of gross over-sharing or of way too much information. But this was back in the day when tennis had no medical time-outs and play was supposed to be “continuous.” So Summerall and Trabert, firm believers in truth in packaging, wanted people to know that the rules were being just slightly bent for good gastric reason. Jimmy, they assured the world, would go to the bathroom and return promptly without any illegal coaching or treatment.
Every tennis fan of a certain age will fondly recall this event as the birth of the bathroom break. But in his otherwise unsurprising new book, Never Make the First Offer, Donald Dell, agent extraordinaire and the uncrowned King of Conflict of Interest, recounts the real story behind the false public announcement – and thereby reveals the kind of squalid behind-the-scenes maneuvering which all too often makes a mockery of the rules of tennis, betrays the trust of spectators and raises suspicions about other side deals and cynical violations that may be occurring today.
As Dell tells the tale, Jimbo didn’t have diarrhea. He developed a massive blood blister on his foot during the semi-final and informed US Open officials that he would have to default the final. This was a nightmare scenario for pro tennis and the USTA, not to mention for CBS TV which faced the prospect of four hours of empty air-time. But comes the moment, comes the man, and as usual when the going gets tough in tennis, the rulebook goes out the window, the proper authorities abdicate responsibility, the wheeler-dealers take over and fans remain in the dark.
Proud of his coolness under pressure and his readiness to improvise, Dell explains that he contacted the doctor for the NY Jets and discovered that Jimbo’s blister could be drained and his condition stabilized with a shot of painkiller. The only trouble, the doctor cautioned, was that the shot would wear off after an hour or so, and Connors would need to have a second ampoule of painkiller needled into his foot.
Tournament director Bill Talbot objected that this was against the rules. There was no provision at that time for medical treatment, even on an emergency basis, during a match. If a player was injured in the course of play, he had to hobble on or default. But neither the rulebook nor the tournament director was any match for Dell. Talbot ducked out of the debate, agreeing to pretend he and Dell had never talked. Then in a temporary coup d’état, Dell, who had no official standing, invented the bogus bathroom break, got Summerall and Trabert to make a misleading announcement, and instructed the chair umpire that millions of fans should be spared a major intestinal malfunction. As a result Connors not only got through the match. He beat Lendl who had been assured that his opponent was answering a call of nature, not having medical treatment. To reiterate the obvious Dell orchestrated a Grand Slam final involving two of his clients when, in fact, he knew and the tournament knew – and