Arthur at 18 beat Gasquet in Montpellier and is among the suspects to break a 40-year Grand Slam fast, but also pay attention to Lucas, the first 2004 to win a Challenger
Forty. In tennis tournaments in France, if you hear it said by the chair umpire it means that the game (pardon: le jeu) is nearing its conclusion. But 40, barring unforeseeable feats at the moment, are also the years without French triumphs in Grand Slam tournaments: the last to succeed was Yannick Noah in 1983, when he sent the Roland Garros audience into raptures. In reality, photographing French tennis is not that simple, however long the Grand Slam fast is and however much the ATP ranking currently places the first transalpine in an anonymous 42nd place, occupied by the 36-year-old Gasquet, former “enfant prodige” and talent never fully consecrated. If you look at today, the plate is crying: the last noteworthy acute was the triumph in Davis in 2017, a tight 3-2 in the final over Belgium, when the old format was still in force. But while the era of Tsonga, Monfils and Gasquet himself is waning, people with extensive backgrounds in the Top 10, a generation of more than promising “cockerels” is emerging, almost all Under 20. With the spotlights, at least this week, on Arthur Fils, who in Montpellier has just won his first match in an Atp 250 (precisely against Gasquet, a sign of destiny) and who at 18 has already acquired a certain solidity.