It has been 43 years and four weeks since a French man won a grand slam. The odds that it’s about to be 43 years and five just got a whole lot shorter. Their last contender, Arthur Rinderknech, plays Novak Djokovic in the third round on Friday, but their great hope heading into the championships, Arthur Fils, lost to Matteo Berrettini on Centre Court, 6-4, 7-5, 3-6, 6-3, in a performance that included a couple of flare-ups with the umpire and his own coaches, a lot of hot exclamations, exultations and exhalations – and an array of absolutely staggering shots.
They hadn’t seen Fils, who is 22, on Centre Court before. But then they haven’t seen much of him anywhere in the past 12 months, which he has mostly spent recovering from the stress fracture in his back he sustained at last year’s French Open. The eight-month break interrupted his rise up the rankings and put a hold on all the talk on the circuit about how he was one of the few young players around with the game to take on the duopoly of Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz.
The crowd soon warmed to him. He earned a round of applause when a kid in the crowd threw down a ball which Berrettini had just mis-hit 12 rows deep and Fils instinctively received it on his knee with a quick keepy-uppy. There’s a lot to like about his game, too; he has a dazzling forehand, full of fizz and spit, which he hits quicker than anyone on the tour. He is quick to come into the net and, most of all, he absolutely does not quit. Even when he’s beaten. He was still roaring for the crowd to give him more support well into the final minutes of the match.
His main problem was that he was up against Berrettini, who has eight years on him, and who knows how to play grass-court tennis about as well as anyone. Berrettini is recovering from an injury too, he withdrew from the French Open midway through the quarter-finals, but he was in ominously good form. He controlled the first two sets with his rocket serve and the smart use of a backhand slice. The shot seemed to completely fox Fils, who struggled with the way it skittered and kicked off the grass a racket’s width beneath where he was expecting it.
Fils earned a couple of break points in the first set but wasn’t able to take either of them, partly because he made a couple of unforced errors at the wrong moment. Fils withdrew from the French Open again this year because of another injury and because he didn’t want to take the risk of aggravating it he arrived for the Championships without having played a single grass-court game this season, and it showed.
Fils had never come back from two sets down in a grand slam match, but he found a way back into this by channelling his anger into the way he was playing. He snapped at his coach, Goran Ivanisevic, who kept asking him to come further forward to take on Berrettini’s serve. Then he snapped again at the umpire, who he felt had allowed Berrettini too much time to let everyone know he was leaving the court between the third and fourth sets. “Why did you already allow him a minute?” he said. “It’s going to be eight minutes before we play again!”
Fils finally broke Berrettini’s serve midway through the third set, an hour and 40 minutes into the match. Berrettini had made the mistake of easing off just enough to allow Fils to start dictating play. Berrettini is a popular player here, although he gave one man a hard stare when he popped a champagne cork into the air exactly as he was gathering for his serve. But by this time Fils had everyone behind him. He threw his arms up to urge them to cheer louder after he whistled through a 90mph backhand winner. He was still shouting away when he was facing match point.
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No doubt Fils is a richly gifted player, just like Gaël Monfils, Richard Gasquet and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga before him. No doubt, like them, he will give plenty of entertainment to the Wimbledon crowds in the years ahead. Whether or not he can ever do what they failed to and win the Championship is going to depend on whether his body holds up given all the torque he puts into those forehand whips he hits, and if he can ever learn to play the sort of savvy tennis Berrettini used to beat him.
