It has "not been a great, good or even just-average-enough-to-excuse French Open," the GLOBE AND MAIL's Cathal Kelly wrote. It "has been a bad French Open." Which, by the typically high standards of Grand Slams, is pretty bad." Two weeks of rain cancellations "had forced the tournament into this unpromising financial and very promising performative situation." Many of the courtside seats "were empty." So why bother "coming at all?"
That’s "how bad this has been." So bad that people "who have the best tickets to watch the best female athlete ever (and do some heroic day-drinking in the process) decide instead to sit backstage at the corporate trough guzzling Fanta and champagne or doing I don’t know what else."
All Grand Slams "are necessary, but the French Open is the least necessary of the lot." It is the "proving ground of obscure Spanish-speaking players who grew up on clay and can’t win on another surface." Were you to meet someone in a bar and find out that he or she was once a Grand Slam winner, "you’d be excited until you’d asked which one." Then you’d say, a little embarrassed, “Oh. The French.”
The other three Slams "are bookends" -- the Australian begins the year, Wimbledon kicks off summer and then the U.S. Open ends it. The French "is shoehorned in there during an awkward moment when everyone has something better to do." Parisians "proved it this year by greeting the tournament with a shrug."
The rain "didn’t help." The fact that tennis "can occasionally be played in rain on a clay surface helped even less." The demands of television "convinced organizers to wait long into each day before cancelling matches and/or continuing ones that should not have been started in the first place."
Occasionally, people "will try to introduce the idea of moving a Slam to the emerging new world."
Whenever they talk like this, the Grand Slam "most often mentioned is the French." It’s the" least compelling of the bunch and, more importantly, the only one that feels even a bit that way" (GLOBE AND MAIL, 6/3).
