A son rebels against his mother. It can happen to any son and any mother, but I’ve never seen it during a tennis match – and certainly not at an important match, because that’s what you call a quarter-final at Roland Garros.
Two Scandinavians faced each other there on Wednesday: the Norwegian Casper Ruud and the Dane Holger Rune, a 19-year-old tennis heaven stormer, of whom I only heard after he had defeated the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas, number four in the world, in the eighth finals. defeated.
To give an idea of the balance of power: Ruud is eighth in the world ranking, Rune is fortieth and Botic van de Zandschulp, who has already beaten Ruud twice, is twenty-ninth. Van de Zandschulp recently lost the ATP final in Munich to Rune when he had to give up for medical reasons.
I didn’t follow the Ruud-Rune match, because I was still groggy from another quarterfinal, the one between Nadal and Djokovic. That was a match to never forget between two players who are so evenly matched that they can hardly win or lose against each other. They have now played against each other 59 times, Djokovic won 30 times, Nadal 29 times. Their match in Paris lasted more than four hours, Djokovic only lost after midnight because he could hardly stand on his legs. I expect them to continue next time until one of them falls backwards, mortally exhausted, in his grave; the other will bend over the grave and stammer: “Game, set and match†
I have seen Ruud–Rune in a summary where I noticed the spicy game of Rune. We’ll be hearing a lot more from him, probably his mother too. Because what happened halfway through the third set? Rune threw his racket to the ground in frustration after a lost game, walked to his seat and started yelling angrily at someone in the stands.
Screaming has unfortunately become something very common in tennis too. Usually it happens while a player is concentrating on his serve. From the stands a kind of drunkard roar is heard from spectators who also want some attention. The umpire sometimes asks for silence, but he never dares to say, as my teachers used to say: “Whoever opens one more mouth will fly out.”
But Rune turned the tables: he yelled into the stands, the same word over and over. And even to his own mother, who was quite restless. He had also made regular eye contact with her and his coach during the match. My Danish is not what it used to be, but I read on the internet that he yelled “Forlad”, which means “Go away”. He also added once: “If you can’t help me.”
What had happened? Did his mother verbally disapprove (“Holger, control you”) from the stands of the racket being thrown? Or had she tapped her forehead demonstratively? We’ll never know, also because Rune claimed after his defeat that his screams were for “someone else.” I would have said that too, but his mother certainly felt addressed, which is why she immediately left the stands.
Nadal was very wise when he took his uncle Toni instead of his mother to his tournaments for years. It paid off.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of June 3, 2022