01/06 - Roland-Garros : "Raising the roof"

SPORTS / TENNIS : ROLAND-GARROS / "Un Autre Regard" by Philippe Delerm / 01/06 - Roland-Garros : "Raising the roof"

A few days before the start of the 2009 French Open, Wimbledon demonstrated its supposed superiority by inaugurating with great fanfare a movable roof. We can easily imagine the sense of relief engendered by such an apparatus, dissipating the meteorological anxieties surrounding an event of such global mediagenic importance.At Roland Garros Stadium there's also talk of roofs, it seems. The creation of a new one appears to be a few years in the future. Let's enjoy this respite. At the risk of appearing to oppose the ineluctable dictatorship of progress, I would say that one of the major draws of the French Open is the threat of rain. The sun at Roland Garros can flee at any moment – happiness while it lasts. There's a whole tradition surrounding the weather here. There's rarely a first week without at least one afternoon of interrupted matches. That's how the Paris tennis season goes.The drawbacks for the players are obvious — warm-ups under grey skies, playing at all hours, musical rain tarps — but what a kick for the crowd in the stadium and watching on TV when the tarps are taken away! After being resigned to waiting, hopes dashed by the sudden violence of a fresh storm, the game takes on a new intensity after the hiatus. Boredom is born from too much comfort. There can be no lightheartedness without melancholy. — Philippe Delerm