Besides the fact that Paris looks good in an October wardrobe and it’s always welcoming during Autumn, this year I had an extra reason to be there: tennis. After enjoying some sightseeing in the morning sun, it was time to head over to Accor Arena in Bercy and disappear between the walls of the stadium for three days of tennis matches in a row. Watching tennis live is a totally different experience than working at a tennis tournament. Besides actually having time to just sit and watch, it’s also a chance to be nothing more than a tennis fan, which means that you can pick a favourite and cheer for them, you can jump in between courts to see as many places as possible or you can get excited if you meet a player (Tsitsipas) on the street.
The organisation of the tennis tournament left a good first impression: you walk in and you get a bracelet which acts as a day pass to all courts. The central court has assigned seats, but for Courts 1 and 2 you have to queue and get in. When buying the tickets, I made sure to pick a section of the court that is my favourite to watch from: the corner. Luckily, the seats were also very close to the court, as the row numbers were increasing as you were descending, which meant that row 10 could be the 6th row from the railing going up. The arena is quite big, with 15609 seats available for tennis matches, and the atmosphere created by the organisers on the centre court is quite impressive. Of course, I had to be a total fan and download the official app and take part in all the interactive games that were available for the audience, including one where you could select the genre of music to which players would walk on court (you could choose between rock, classical and electro) just to increase the chances of them walking in to Muse’s Uprising. Can’t say the same about courts 1 and 2, which are incredibly small for a Masters 1000, and very hard to access, especially since organisers block the access to them claiming that there are no more seats available, when inside information clearly shows that there are. That cost me a doubles match on the first day! A few highlights though: Andy Murray vs Gilles Simon. Crazy atmosphere. The Frenchman’s last tournament, a first match against such an opponent, the crowd carrying him on their shoulders, it was quite impressive. Downsides of this: Simon’s playing style is rather flat, and the French crowd really confuses tennis with football, but nevertheless this was the highlight of day one. Other favourite moments were seeing Mikael Ymer playing against Bublik, or Cressy against Schwartzman. On the downside, the tennis crowd was loud and disrespectful, the food and beverages were overpriced and it was very hard to get a good cup of coffee. Due to the fact that the match between Simon and Murray was a long three-setter, after 5 games of Korda vs De Minaur it was time to head to the hotel. It was quite late into the night but luckily the hotel was one minute away from the arena.
Day two left no time for playing tourist, all matches were worth watching. The day was also sold-out. First match: Isner vs Rublev. Isner I’ve seen live before: spectacular serve on good days but long rallies and not very attractive shots. It was the first time I saw Andrey Rublev play live, he’s fun to watch. While the matches were unfolding on the centre court, courts 1 and 2 were hosting some impressive players that would have been worth seeing: Denis Shapovalov, Grigor Dimitrov, Fabio Fognini, Holger Rune or Tommy Paul. However, the queues to the two courts were incredibly long, and say you needed to leave and get some water or visit the restroom: you had to go all the way outside and queue again if you wanted to get back to the matches. I spent most of the day on the centre court watching the matches there, with the gem of the day being the match between Djokovik and Cressy, after which the Serb held the interview in French, capturing the crowd’s admiration even more. Ruud vs Gasquet was the last match of the day that I fully attended, after which Khachanov and Huesler took over the stage close to midnight, only to finish playing around 3 am in the morning.
Day three, the last day. It was finally time to see Stefanos Tsitsipas play, at last, after barely having time to catch a glimpse of some of his matches in Stockholm. The first match of the day was between the Greek and Daniel Evans of the UK. That was a nice watch and I was happy to see Stefanos walk out as the winner. The second match was between Daniil Medvedev and Alex De Minaur. First time I see Medvedev live, I’ve seen Alex several times before. This was a long and tight match and both of them deserved to win, but at the end of the day it was the Aussie that came out on top, to the frustration of his opponent who, after the last point, hit his racket against the court as hard as he could. The match between the world number 1, Carlos Alcaraz, and Yoshihito Nishioka was one of the most boring matches that I’ve seen during those few days. Maybe because it came after Medvedev vs De Minaur, maybe because I am not yet familiar with the Spaniard’s game, but it didn’t grow on me. The next match, Simon vs Fritz, was another long match during which the Frenchman displayed his signature game to live another day at the last tournament of his career. The surprise of the day came when Rafael Nadal was defeated by Tommy Paul, after easily taking the first set. The Spaniard lost the second set in the tiebreak and collapsed entirely during the decider, giving it away 6-1. Credit to the American who didn’t miss any opportunity to step-up his game and gather the points on the scoreboard next to his name. During the day I also finally got to go see a bit of doubles: a few games of Cressy/Escobar vs Evans/Peers and Ram/Salisbury vs Doumbia/Reboul. And in the blink of an eye the three days had passed.
The feeling of leaving a tennis stadium either because the tournament is over or because it is time to go do other things is extremely familiar. I’ve been feeling it year after year since I was 17 and it is always the same. It’s even harder to know that the second day there will be more matches to watch, but instead of entering the arena, you have to walk to the train station. Lovely memories are gathered like this, and filed away alongside all the other memories of live matches, nice experiences, walk-on-court tunes and cities visited to watch tennis. After two years of planning, dreaming and hoping, the tennis trip had finally taken place. It took me this long to put to good use the grant (Björn Sturéns Minne) I got from Stockholm Open in 2019, for doing something a little bit extra as a volunteer. The award can be used to travel to another tournament for study purposes and the focus of it is tennis, obviously. I was super happy and surprised when I received it, and I was extremely happy when I had the chance to step inside Accor Arena to watch tennis because of it. But after three days of watching the best players on one of tennis’ greatest scenes, it was time to board a TGV to Stuttgart, onward to another adventure. What was that one all about, you ask? Well, you will read all about it in my next post. Game, set, match, championship: Holger Rune, Koolhof/Skupski.
Spinning Words 