French kiss sign of thaw in icy affair
A cool breeze blew north to south across Court Philippe Chatrier throughout its final match Monday, complicating an already chilly meeting.
The fourth-round match between 28th-seeded Caroline Garcia and No. 43-ranked Alizé Cornet was the latest-stage meeting between two Frenchwomen at Roland Garros in 44 years, but it came at a tense moment for French women’s tennis.
At the match’s conclusion — Garcia having clinched a 6-2, 6-4 victory with a deep crosscourt forehand — the crowd reacted with delight when the two clasped hands and kissed each other on both cheeks in traditional French fashion, chummily bumped shoulders, and smiled.
It was an apparent thaw in a relationship that had grown cold, with a rift having formed between Garcia and her compatriots on the women’s tour.
“I was just so happy, I just went for it,” Garcia said of the gesture.
“I mean, everyone was waiting for a very cold match, and I’m sure that everyone looked at this match to see how was it going to happen. Everyone was surprised — maybe it’s going to be a battle or whatever? But, I mean, I just tried to stay like a professional player.”
Cornet was slightly less effusive, initially raising an eyebrow at a suggestion that it had been a “warm” exchange at the net between the two.
“Warm?” she said, smiling. “Warm? It was probably the coldest kiss I had in my life — but it was a kiss.”
Cornet added: “I was actually also surprised — I was not expecting that she wanted to give me a kiss. And I liked it. It was good to finish on this note.”
Until this year, the women atop French tennis appeared from the outside to be a tight-knit group. Led by Garcia, 23, the team reached the Fed Cup final last year, and Garcia won the doubles title here last year with Kristina Mladenovic.
But after Garcia ended her doubles partnership with Mladenovic in March, a divide grew between Garcia and the others. When she announced in April that she would miss a Fed Cup tie with a back injury, her three teammates — Cornet, Mladenovic and Pauline Parmentier — posted identical messages on Twitter in near unison: “LOL.”