This promises to be some crop. For long sweeps of yesterday afternoon, Gasquet and Murray, the French prodigy and the Scottish boy wonder, seemed destined for an unlikely meeting in the last 16 of Wimbledon. Only Gasquet will make the rendezvous.
It was almost as if Gasquet and Murray were attached by string yesterday so similar was the early course of their matches. First Murray, the precocious young man from Dunblane, took the opening set against David Nalbandian on a tie-break; a few minutes later, Gasquet, manouevring Gilles Muller, Nadal’s second round conqueror, around the court with the skill of a puppeteer won his tie-break. Both forged through the second set before the parting of the ways.
Gasquet turned 19 last week; Nadal earlier this month. Murray and Monfils are both 18. In the context of Boris Becker’s victory here at the age of 17 years and 227 days 20 years ago, they are already elder statesmen; in the eyes of ordinary mortals they represent a clear vision of the future and of a significant shift in the balance of power within tennis. Two Frenchmen, a Scot and a Spaniard, are hardly representatives of the traditional powerhouses of the game. In Australia and America, the inquests have already begun.
On Friday, Monfils, who won three of the four junior grand slams last year, could be found facing a desultory collection of inquisitors in the main interview room. What, he was asked, is the main difference between playing in the juniors and the seniors? Pause for thought.
“It’s here,” he said, pointing to his temple, “in the head.” The point was reinforced from the same seat almost a day later by Nalbandian.
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Monfils is a superb athlete, but having just signed a £500,000 a year deal with Nike and been promoted beyond his years in the build-up to the French Open, he had to be persuaded by his coach, Thierry Champion, to stay in England after losing to Jamie Delgado in the first round at Queen’s. He lost in the first round too at Monte Carlo, Barcelona and in Paris, learning the hard way that a spectacular junior career is no buttress against reality. Monfils’s mental strength is as suspect as Murray’s fitness.
“In the seniors, I am losing more,” he reflected. “When I was in juniors I was playing so good and I think maybe I was a little more confident. But it was the same in the juniors when I was ranked 40 I was losing. This year, I don’t talk about losing or winning, it’s just learn and see what I have to do to be the best maybe next year or two years after that.” On a form line through Pat Cash and Stefan Edberg, it takes five years to graduate from junior champion to Wimbledon champion, but few make the grade.
The common strand among this unusually gifted generation is the relative unconventionality of their tennis upbringing. Monfils’s father Rufin is originally from the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, his mother Sylvette is from nearby Martinique. They met in Paris where Gael and his younger brother Daryl were brought up in the unpretentious suburb of Bobigny. Monfils left school to train at the national sports institute, but for the past two years he has been based at Paris Jean Bouin club, owned and financed by the French industrialist, Arnaud Lagardere.
Gasquet, one of Monfils’s closest friends, could not be more different, a product of provincial small town France, the son of two tennis teachers and blessed with such transparent ability he was featured on the cover of the major French tennis magazine as an eight-year-old. He has the same natural talent, shrewd judges say, as Roger Federer, but his parents refused to let him join the national federation school, preferring to keep him at home until he was 16. Only recently has he come under the financial wing of the French Tennis Federation and begun to mature.
In terms of mental and physical development, Nadal has already crossed the great divide, though not yet on grass. He showed an astonishing maturity not just in sweeping through the clay court season, but in successfully shouldering the expectations his form demanded. The tennis public were captivated by his piratical dress sense, his resilience and his energy. At Queen’s, Murray talked about Nadal’s early development. “Rafael is a good friend,” he said. “I texted him after the French. He’s trying to teach me Spanish and I’m working on his English, but he’s stopped growing now so is able to work harder on the weights than I can at the moment. I can start getting stronger when I’ve stopped growing.”
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Monfils has Murray’s build; Gasquet is shorter and stockier, but all four are playing a modern, all-court, style of tennis adaptable to clay, hard courts and, lastly, the grass. Murray’s decision to leave home and move to the Sanchez-Casal claycourt academy in Barcelona was calculated to make him a very different animal from Tim Henman. Murray plies his trade from a few feet behind the baseline where Gasquet, Monfils and Nadal are also resident. The wear on the courts, restricted now to a rectangular box stretching from the baseline for about three feet, is indicative of the prevailing style of play. No longer do the serve and volleyers wear a weary path towards the net.
Monfils went to the net once in three sets against Ancic; Gasquet too is in the Murray mould, preferring to counter-punch. But, in a strange network of friendships, which stretches from Gasquet through Monfils to Murray and Nadal, they drive each other forward.
“My goal for Gael,” says Champion, his coach, “is that he will become a complete player in three years. By then, he will reach a level he can maintain. He can still grow and fill out.” Murray and Gasquet have grown before our eyes.