Djokovic having forfeited, the road for the final seemed cleared for Zverev. I rained in my corner. Not only was I going to settle a Germanic player for the rest of the tournament, I who of all eternity had maintained with Germany relations which will be called by modesty of “complicated”, but moreover, a player whose game did not give me any emotion, if not a bleak and long boredom. And as if that were not enough, our brave Alexander had just signed an agreement with his ex-partner to put an end to his trial for domestic violence. Frankly, more attractive and refreshing, I would have had trouble finding.
I imagined how Godard would have taken pleasure in filming Zverev, while superimposing images of the stands and bombings on Gaza, swastika and slicked reverse, winning service and close plan a speech by Netanyahu.
I was swimming in full confusion. It was of public notoriety that Jean-Luc Godard had always made remarks that were flirting with anti-Semitism, even going so far as to ride, in a documentary commissioned by the OLP (organization of Liberation of Palestine), the image of Golda Meir with that of Hitler. But what was properly amazing is that the thesis defended by Godard throughout his life, namely that the Israelis subjected to the Palestinians what they themselves had endured with the Germans, took to the glow of the events of October 7-oc a tragic resonance. Had we not heard a humorist or allegedly, as evoke, on a public service radio, the figure of Netanyahu by comparing it to a “Nazi without foreskin”?
During the months preceding the opening of the tournament, this most vile merger worthy of the dirtiest of anti -Semitisms, a foul anti -Semitism, had found a very particular echo on the far left, and the very words of Godard, “The Palestinians’ suicide bombings to make a Palestinian state exist in the end, in the end of what the Jews were leaving to be driven like sheep and exterminating in the gas chambers thus sacrificing itself to manage to make the state of Israel exist”had a prophetic accent, as if the Swiss filmmaker, from the bottom of his grave, was still intended to comment on the fresh news.
And now by an improbable competition of circumstances, I was inspired by one of his ideas to follow the adventures of a tennis tournament which took place against the backdrop of war between Israel and Hamas, a tournament where the fate had wanted me to be very interested in the journey of a German player!
I imagined how Godard would have taken pleasure in filming Zverev, while superimposing images of the stands and bombings on Gaza, swastikas and sliced backhands, winning service and close plan on a television broadcasting a speech by Netanyahu, with a speech from Führer in trance, rapprochement between the earth smoky Kaleidoscope where Roland-Garros would have become, under the eye of the master, the perfect symbol of a West who, in the name of his guilt in the implementation of the Shoah, would let a new genocide perpetuate, with the same indifference as a line judge reporting a good fault.
Without forgetting Ukraine who, in view of the genealogy of Zverev – his father was a Davis Cup player under the Soviet Union – would have allowed the filmmaker to summon Marx, Lenin, Putin, Zelensky, Marioupol, Trump, Biden, Nuremberg, Chernobyl, all this anthology of references of which his documentaries and even his films were always truffled. In Cannes, the presentation of the film, Omitous landwould have caused a scandal, the Crif would have been involved, Amélie Mauresmo, the director of the tournament, too.
In an indescribable hubbub, during a press conference intended to stay in legend, in his slow and heavy voice like a Vaudois fondue, Godard, between two puffs of cigar, would have been chanting that “Tennis is war without memory, but with Jews anyway … Tennis is a sport of aristocrats played by capitalists who would have read Brecht … Except that Zverev, he makes propaganda tennis, his reverse, for example, looks like a sound of boots … Gaza is the unthinkled of amortized, we have the impression of an acceleration, A story of biblical terror, a lob of a century in a century with spectators who look at the trajectory of the ball like the Palestinians the route of a bomb in the sky of Judea. ”
For the Zverev/de Minaur match, I had the right to a new night session. With its very special splendor, I started to get a taste for it.
(…)
Unlike the other day, when the Djokovic match had delayed the start of the night session, this time, it started on time. The sky was sumptuous, of a blue that is both tender and dreamy where the sunlight disappeared little by little without the evening deciding to take over, suspended time which floated like a dream on the court Philippe-Chatrier. Now, I managed to win the press gallery without shooting myself or almost. My phobia had not disappeared, but I kept it enough from a distance so as not to clutter my brain with delusional thoughts. Nevertheless, when I joined her, I felt both relief and a certain feeling of pride, as if I had just climbed one of the highest peaks in the Himalayas. We have the victories that we can.
In the Press Tribune, we were not long in following the meeting. It is true that, on paper, the game seemed unbalanced. It was partly, even if Alex de Minaur showed formidable fighting spirit, however insufficient to manage to shake Zverev. Alexander was in a good day. He distributed his setbacks with the power of a whale who killed one of his fins when diving back into his sea depths. De Minaur was flickering, but did not admit defeated. He had a twirling game, held good in the exchange, managed to chain a cushioning followed by a lifted lob which raised the enthusiasm of the public, before the latter fell in his traditional apathy.
The Australian had never resigned himself, but without this debauchery of efforts being able to really worry the German player, serene as a Prince of Bavaria assured to seduce his Lorelei.
This time, we had thought of bringing his blankets, we left them lying on his lap, or else, behind his shoulders. In the private spaces located halfway up the court, we enjoyed champagne while we were looking at the meeting sometimes on the screen of a television, sometimes beyond the bay window. It was a world apart, women had this elegance specific to people whose fortune is no longer to be made, while their companions displayed relaxed outfits, a simple polo shirt supposed to prove their attachment to tennis and its values.
Who were they really, I did not know, but I imagined that at the time when the life of the big bourgeois and the irremovable nobility still took place in salons, this world disappeared so dear to Marcel Proust, in Le Figaro of the next day, as in the past the list of guests invited to an evening with this or that marquise, in the midst of the worldly section: “Yesterday, in Roland-Garros, while the German Alexander Zverev was fighting against a player from the southern lands, Alex de Minaur, we noticed in the lodges the presence of Monsieur and Madame Beauvoir, while in the living room next door, recognizable by her pair of twins, we saw, wearing a yellow canary dress, Madamoiselle Particular to the racket strokes of the German player, whose high silhouette was undoubtedly reminded him that of his father, the Count of Raincy, formerly Ambassador to Berlin … “
The three rounds were hung, but in the end, Zverev’s victory did not suffer from any dispute: 6/4, 7/6, 6/4. The Australian did not have to feed with regret. He had taken his chance when she presented herself, he had never resigned himself, showing himself a valor that had fun seeing, he had even marked spectacular points, but without this debauchery of efforts not really concerning the German player, serene as a Prince of Bavaria assured to seduce his Lorelei.
In the next round, he would face the Norwegian Casper Ruud who remained on two defeats in the final of Roland-Garros. It would be anything but simple, but the commentators got along to think that the German had enough arguments to go to the end. I who was nothing, just a reported piece, an intruder which we had to wonder what he was there, novelist in a tennis cavale with questionable interests, I did not think much of it, except if I dispatched myself-Mind had barely sounded-, I could still catch the last bus.
