Gael Monfils: The Greatest [Showman]

In a sport that has been flattened by numbers, Gael Monfils brought life and dimension to tennis like no one else.

PARIS, France — For more than two decades now, men’s tennis has been hyperfocused on greatness. Specifically, greatness as quantified by statistical measures.

Since Pete Sampras didn’t captivate the general public like iconic stars before him had, a novel angle was found to make people care about whether he won or lost: his closing in on the record for Grand Slam singles titles won. With Roy Emerson’s pre-Open Era total of 12 as a target, Sampras’ chase to be the “greatest” seemed to give his marches through major draws new purpose, and his winning his 13th at Wimbledon in 2000 was the emotional high point of his career.

Sampras’ 13 to Emerson’s 12 was hardly useful as an apples-to-apples comparison, though. The rhythms of the tour in prior generations looked nothing like they did by the 90s: attendance at the Australian Open and French Open had been sporadic and scant for many of the game’s best until then.

But despite the one-dimensionality, the lens stuck. Past players’ legacies were retconned using this metric, and future players would be judged similarly. Roger Federer’s biggest coronation moments came in the summer of 2009, when he won the French Open—to complete his Career Slam and equal Sampras’s total of 14 majors—and then won his record-breaking 15th weeks later at Wimbledon. As Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic each caught and passed Federer, so too did they each earn claims to being the GOAT: “Greatest Of All Time.”

But for the past few days at Roland Garros, I’ve tried thinking about greatness in an entirely different way. Maybe it’s just something in the water here in France that makes me value style and panache more than cold hard numbers; maybe trying to sleep in sweltering rooms without air conditioning is making me meaningfully delirious.

Or maybe I’m really onto something here, and Gael Monfils, who is playing the French Open for the final time, actually is the Greatest of All Time?

Gael Monfils this week at Roland Garros. (Photo courtesy of the FFT)

To read the rest of this and hear my case for Gael Monfils as the greatest—and read previews of seven of the best matches on tap for Monday, please subscribe to Bounces!

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