The main character of X. The Premier League crisis club. The tennis player mentioning Tennis TV during a tennis match broadcast on Tennis TV.
As the new adage goes, every day there is always one, and the goal is never to be one. Unfortunately for world number 88 Corentin Moutet, on a chaotic Monday evening in Madrid, he was.
The Frenchman faced then world number 111 Shang Juncheng – who is often called Jerry – in the round of 16, and the duo produced the craziest match of the year so far. Shang prevailed and moved up to 103rd with a win over a player he said was the only one he didn’t want to face in the first round.
Tennis is often gripping – a stressful back-and-forth as players push each other beyond their limits, climbing a ladder of quality from which someone must always fall in the end. Tennis is less often chaos, not biting but dizzying, elements like “points” and “rallies” swept aside in favor of mismanagement and chaos.
Here, Athleticism breaks down the tie-breaks, coffee requests, water drinks and flying flurry that lasted almost four hours in the Spanish capital.
In the context of everything that followed, the first set tiebreak was somewhat normal.
By then, Moutet had already wasted seven set points, in a match that would ultimately be defined by absurd profligacy on both sides as much as points won.
At 6-6, Moutet lured Shang into a cat-and-mouse game with a short angle.
But he transformed Moutet from feline to rodent, sending the ball across the field to score the point; move a set point up; and encourage the Frenchman to engage in some ball abuse.
However, Moutet did not let himself be refused and won the tie-break 11-9, the least he could do on his ninth set point.
The duo played 290 points in a fight that lasted three hours and 59 minutes – just four minutes short of the 2009 semi-final between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, which was at the time the longest match in the history of the ATP circuit. It was the kind of gripping, barely believable climb that characterizes so many of the best tennis matches of all time. Rather, it was a superior circus.
Shang recovered in the second set, dominating Moutet with her forehand to quickly go up 3-0. During the change, Moutet addresses the referee. He wanted coffee. He couldn’t have coffee.
“I saw on Tennis TV that they provide coffee,” he said, descending on the online booths that no one wants to enter and echoing Daniil Medvedev’s line after a strange call from obstruction against Alexander Bublik in Toronto in 2021.
“Why can’t you get me some coffee?” Is it because I’m on court 4? Tell me!”
Moutet took his coffee from a spectator, apparently without thinking about the sport’s anti-doping rules, but lost the set. But then he came back, in a match which, despite the substantial advances of both players, whether on the scoreboard or by creating chances, was ultimately decided by a few points. The tennis rating system, how we like you.
We arrive at 0-3 in the third, with Moutet three games from defeat and serving at 15-15. He misses his first serve and sends a weak rally ball into Shang’s forehand on his second, before this happens:
Although the optics would have been better if Moutet had been soaked, a sprinkling of water (and a suddenly bursting garden hose) naturally discouraged him, even though he wasn’t very likely to recover. point.
A normal day from Corentin Moutet, that’s all we ask for. That will never happen.
Move forward. The score is 5-5 in the tie-break of the last set which this match deserves. Moutet serves. This crucial point will undoubtedly be totally normal.
Moutet hits a good serve that pushes Shang deep into the court, forcing a return that he could easily have volleyed off. Except he momentarily transformed into a footballer, as his racket slipped from his hands, forcing him to swing one foot in frustration and concede the point.
Shang would take the match (on his fifth match point, continuing the theme of wasted opportunities) and run through a chaotic classic of sorts. Moutet still had time to save one of those match points by hitting the net rope with a forehand, the ball unleashed on the caffeine fumes he finally received in the second set.
In the end, it wasn’t gripping, but it was disorienting, a whirling dervish of racket and ball – and overpowering pipes.
At the press conference that followed, Shang was so thrilled about the whole thing that he wouldn’t have minded losing.
“On clay, it was very physically difficult against an extraordinary player like Corentin. The level was crazy. Even if I had lost, I would have no regrets. It was almost the perfect match for me,” he said.
Moutet was at once beaming, furious and philosophical, castigating the ATP for not moving his match after qualifying, but asserting that “even when the body is weak, the heart is always there”.
First round matches, even at Masters 1000 events, don’t tend to be remembered for long.
These nearly four hours of chaos in Madrid will continue.
(Top photo: ATP/Tennis TV)