Let’s start with the brass band.
That’s what caught Ben Shelton off guard when he stepped onto the court to face France’s Hugo Gaston on Sunday. The playing field is Court 14: a sunken stage that, when the opponent is a native son, can quickly turn into a suffocating cauldron of noise and chaos.
“This is the first time I’ve ever been to a tennis tournament and had a band playing in the stands at my court.” Sheldon said. Shelton, the No. 15 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. Road games at Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia were particularly bad, he said.
“If you play in the SEC (Southeastern Conference), all bets are off.”
If the bets took place on campus, then at Roland Garros they were somewhere along the Seine. The band played throughout the game, the thump of the bass drum triggered a rhythmic clap, and the blast of trumpets and horns roused the standing-room-only crowd of thousands to their feet, allowing Sheldon to commit as many Errors and mistakes.
That’s what tennis did at Roland Garros, turning an elegant sport known for its obsession with etiquette into the frenzy of a football match.
This isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. The lords of Wimbledon would have none of it, and the All England Club has long set the standard for much of the sport. But it’s just two of the short weeks of the tennis season, a tournament that reminds a sport that it doesn’t have to adhere to the norms of Victorian England.
Roaring crowds were the focus of this year’s tournament (Richard Callis/Eurasia Sports Photos/Getty Images)
Players and fans might enjoy it a little more.
“T“They really love tennis, I think they really love tennis,” said Canadian Denis Shapovalov, who was on the same court with France’s Luca later that night. ·Luca Van Assche received similar treatment when they clashed. Shapovalov, a die-hard Toronto Maple Leafs fan, is no stranger to drunken, brazen crowds at sporting events, but not to the games he plays.
“It’s very interesting to be a tennis player, even though it was directed at me.”
After a series of violent clashes in the early rounds, tennis players and fans were forced to reaccept the current rules of the game. At its best, tennis is a sport that inspires uncontrollable emotions, from awe and ecstasy to desolation and anguish. Fans experiencing these emotions should not show it—at least until a point is over—and even then, don’t show it too much.
Lines do get crossed, and in Paris, non-French players bear the brunt. Belgium’s David Goffin was extremely mean after his five-set win over France’s Giovanni Mpethi-Pericard on Tuesday night, saying after the crowd spent three and a half hours laughing at him Cup ears mocked him for a few seconds.
Parisians have form. After Taylor Fritz pushed down France’s Arthur Rinderknech last year, he ran around the court with his fingers to his lips and screamed amid boos , he wants them to “let me hear it!”
Goffin became even more uneasy.
“It’s outrageous and completely disrespectful,” the mild-mannered Belgian told reporters from his country after the game. He claimed a fan spat gum at him.
“Soon there will be smoke bombs, hooligans and fights in the stands. He compared this behavior to that of football fans – implying that this behavior has no place at all in tennis.
Goffin gave some feedback (Benoit Doppagne/Belga Mag/AFP via Getty Images)
World No. 1 Iga Swiatek defeated Naomi Osaka in three sets in a gripping duel on Wednesday and gently scolded the crowd at Stade Philippe-Chatrier for making noise mid-match.
Swiatek understands the passion of the French crowd, she said, but tennis has etiquette and the crowd wants to be quiet, although many of her peers, namely Frances Tiafoe, think that concept is long overdue. Reading between the lines, it appears that Swiatek, while speaking in general terms about the topic, actually only talked about it a bit: When she was doing a routine serve forehand volley in the third set against Osaka, someone spoke to the ball as she screamed. She missed the volley.
If tennis players were regularly exposed to noise of varying pitches and intensities that mapped onto the contours of their rallies—as they are in almost every other sport—this sort of thing wouldn’t be a problem.
When a wheezing sound occurs in a vacuum, it’s even more jarring.
“I just want to point out that this is not going to be easy for us,” Swiatek said. “The crowd in France can be a bit harsh, so I don’t want the attention right now. I don’t know if it’s a good decision, but I hope they treat me as a human being.
It all caused quite a stir at the French Open, where tournament director Amelie Mauresmo said on Thursday she would no longer allow spectators to drink in the stands. Referees and safety officials are on alert to stop unruly behaviour.
But fans who get emotional during a game will not be punished as long as they are not deliberately stalling a specific player.
“If you throw something at a player, it’s black and white, you’re out,” Mauresmo said. “It’s not the same thing to express emotion at a certain moment.”
Given the unique nature of Roland Garros, it’s also difficult to tell whether this is all a true referendum on the nature of spectatorship, or more of an occupational hazard of two weeks in the City of Lights. Home advantage is as old as sports and war, and in tennis it’s inherently unfair. Only players from four countries – Australia, France, Great Britain and the United States – can experience home advantage at the Grand Slam, the sport’s most important tournament.
Last year, domestic favorite Caroline Garcia even got a portrait (Robert Prange/Getty Images)
Everyone else has to deal with the added charm of a hometown crowd (and its proven impact on referees and referees) in tournaments that mean less and offer much smaller prizes. Things are a little weird about this year’s game, too.
Rafael Nadal vs. Alexander Zverev and Swiatek vs. Osaka were not typical first and second round matches; it was the kind of situations fans are used to seeing in semifinals and finals, and this one When danger is at its peak, emotions are at their highest. When Andy Murray won his first Wimbledon final against Novak Djokovic in 2013, when Djokovic’s first ball flew Very high and deep, the entire center court audience let out a sharp scream at the match point, and when the ball did not hit the ground, the entire center court audience let out a scream. Back to Murray. Murray returned the favor.
Djokovic hit the next ball into the net.
The venue exploded.
Murray in the crowd after winning Wimbledon in 2013 (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Corentin Moutet’s coach Petar Popovic made the most of the team’s funds, setting up a first-round match against Nicolas Jarry, a former Roma player A strong Chilean player who reached the finals. In February, a group of guerrillas in Chile, playing tennis like everyone else, made Mutai’s life quite miserable. Popovich told the media he hoped French fans would take revenge. And they did, as Jarry was chastised for every mistake and fault, destroying his concentration and spirit, turning the court of Simone-Mathieu into a Roman amphitheatre. Mutai won four sets, the last of which 6-0.
This kind of uplifting support can only do so much. The last French woman to win the French Open was Mary Pierce in 2000.
Let’s get back to the orchestra.
They are part of La Banda Paname, a group of about 50 musicians that provide spirit and entertainment at various sporting events throughout the region. BNP Paribas, an international bank that is one of the biggest sponsors of tennis and Roland Garros, provides their salaries under the banner “We are Tennis”. They wore all-white outfits with matching logo polo shirts.
“We started out at Queen’s Club in the 2015 Davis Cup match against Great Britain,” said Vincent Raymond, one of the five-person panel on Tuesday.
“Andy Murray punished us.”
Play a tune (AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias)
Raymond is joined by band members Julian, Bryce, Nicholas and John: two trumpets, drums, a trombone, a flute and an emcee/conductor. Their mission, he said, was to make noise, support France and support the sport. They have reserved seats throughout the stadium so they can hop from pitch to pitch.
The way French tennis goes, that means going wherever France needs them in week one. Typically, French players withdraw from the game after that. “Then we changed tactics,” Raymond said. “We want to provide an atmosphere of fair play. This is tennis after all. The key is to stop the game before the referee stops talking.
However, the band can only control what they can control. Once they get the crowd excited, all bets are off, especially at Estadio Suzanne Lenglen, a 10,000-seat gem of a stadium where Argentina’s Tomas Martin Echeverri Martin Etcheverry faced rising 21-year-old French player Arthur Cazaux in the first round.
Kazoks 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 set and, after a service game, seemed minutes away from defeat. His shoulders slumped and his legs dragged.
Then, when Kazoks returned to the pitch after the substitutions, the crowd became more raucous than it had been all day, with plenty of help from the band. A group of Katzokos’ friends sat above the back of the court, exchanging chants and arm pumps with fans on the other side of the court like they’d been practicing for months.
Echeverri took a few deep breaths and began to serve the food.
fault.
More carols. More screams. A short chorus.
Another mistake.
Within minutes, the crowd was filled with Kazoko’s break. He couldn’t hold his serve so they showed him another serve.
“I took another breath because of the crowd, so thank you to them,” Kazox said later. “I like the atmosphere.”
And then there’s the line: “It’s like a football game.”
Echeverri said the atmosphere was difficult.
“I played against the French a lot,” he said. “Every moment is difficult.”
Alas, not hard enough. Kazoko lost four sets in a row, with the crowd screaming until the dying moments, and then several more in a row.
The band checked the schedule and moved to another ballpark.
(Above: AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias)
