Shot at partisan Parisians falls on deaf ears
Roland Garros crowd are not as bad as French Open champion Muguruza makes out, writes Jim White
Toni Nadal is succinct about those who watch tennis at Roland Garros. There is only one thing worse than a French crowd, he once said, and that is a Parisian crowd. They are, he suggested, “really stupid”. Given that his nephew Rafael’s re-appearance this year at the tournament he has won nine times was soundtracked by the sort of greeting more generally associated with the second coming, clearly something has irked Uncle Toni.
But he is not the only one. Joining a list that includes Serena Williams, Martina Hingis and Maria Sharapova, the latest to be disturbed by shouty Parisians is last year’s French Open champion, Garbiñe Muguruza.
After her defeat at the weekend by Kristina Mladenovic, a weeping Muguruza was obliged to walk out of her press conference in an effort to compose herself. Her tearful complaint was that the crowd had subjected her to wholly unnecessary abuse. One fan had apparently advised her to go home to Venezuela immediately. Except he was rather more blunt in his terminology. Her coach, Sam Sumyk, described the Paris crowd as being “pathetic, no class”. Which is the kind of thing you can only get away with if you are yourself French.
For anybody who has ever attended an Old Firm match, or indeed any run-of-the-mill English football league game, noisy as things might get at Roland Garros, Muguruza’s snowflake reaction may seem a touch overdramatic. For most footballers, the mere act of taking a throw-in alongside where opposition fans are congregated requires the hide of a rhinoceros, the resilience of a limpet and the selective hearing of a politician. For most in the game, being told to eff off back to South America would count
For anyone who has attended a football game, her reaction may seem over-dramatic
as something lifted straight from the pages of Debrett’s Handbook.
Muguruza’s complaint, however, was less about what was said than why. Her vanquisher, you see, is French. And the crowd were not simply backing the local girl, she claimed they were indulging in deliberate gamesmanship in the attempt to undermine the foreigner.
Catcalls, whistles and vocal interruptions were orchestrated to put her off her stride and thus benefit her opponent. It was not only rude and disrespectful, it had an edge of xenophobia. For the good of the game, she suggested, it needed to be curtailed.
Mladenovic was having none of that. Writing an online column for Sport360, she reckoned the Parisians were mild in their partisanship. Try taking on a German at Stuttgart, she suggested. She had recently played Laura Siegemund there and, such was the home support, had been unable to hear herself breathing. But she did not complain because “this is sport, it’s normal”. Shut up and get on with it, was her advice to the former champion.
She has a point. It happens everywhere. Anyone facing Andy Murray, Kyle Edmund, Johanna Konta or Heather Watson at Wimbledon would be advised to fit earplugs. Every point won by the local favourite will be celebrated to the echo, every point won by their opponent greeted with a polite disdain. Unless the opponent happens to be Roger Federer. It is to Muguruza’s – and Nadal’s – disadvantage that no grand slam competition takes place in Spain.
But frankly, even if the beaten champion’s complaints were legitimate, anyone heading to Wimbledon in July is unlikely to offer her much support. If the alternative is to hear someone, labouring under the hopelessly mistaken impression he is patrolling the cutting edge of satire, yell out “C’mon Tim” every time Murray is on Centre Court, then we can all live with a little bit of robust partisanship.