PARIS—The French Open has not one but two Kids’ Days. The first is held the Saturday before the tournament began; the second is today, on the opening Wednesday. It doesn’t take long, as you approach the grounds, to hear that something different is happening. A block away, you start picking up a high-pitched ambient sound in the air. As you get closer, you realize that this sound is made up of many squealing, laughing, and chattering young voices. By the time you reach the big black iron gates of Roland Garros, you can distinguish individual words. Or, more precisely, one word, cried out over and over, from every direction, in a steadily ascending wail: “AlllllllaaaaaaAAAAAAYYYYYYY!!!” (That’s allez, in case you don't understand French children well.)
A high percentage of the people in this country play tennis, there’s a healthy semi-pro system here, and few nations produce as wide a variety of steady Top 100 professionals. Exposing kids to the sport early must not hurt. And while these rambunctious packs of pre-teens make the already-crowded grounds a little more chaotic, they also inject a fresh and comical—if not always innocent—enthusiasm, one that you can hear all around you.
You hear the kids in the upper reaches of Chatrier shouting, “Allez Rogi!” throughout Roger Federer’s match. You hear teenage boys whistling rudely as Ana Ivanovic walks onto Court 2—“Smile for me, Ana, pretty smile.” You see teenage girls hustling for the front row as men's matches begin. You see the younger ones eating ice cream and waiting, as quietly as they can, in the long lines that form outside every court here.
Mostly, though, you see them bunched up on top of one another near the long ramp that leads out of the player area below Court Suzanne Lenglen. Not only do you see the kids here, you have trouble getting around them. They form a sort of flying wedge that extends 50 meters beyond the entrance to the ramp, and slows traffic through the middle of the grounds. As each new body emerges from Lenglen and wanders upward, every face, every pair of eyes, every oversize tennis ball and pen and magazine, leans forward a few inches, ready to pounce.
It’s an odd sensation to visit both sides of this scene: the fans and kids massed outside, the people who make the tournament happen eating and lounging on the inside. To your left, when you walk down the ramp, you come to Lenglen’s press room, occupied mostly by photographers, and its outdoor dining area, where people linger over their lunches under canopies. (As a good overworked American, my own lunch is usually a pre-packaged club sandwich and a Pepsi at my desk.)
Walk through a couple of doors and you come to the player lounge and dining area. Instead of the desks and computers that fill the press room, the lounge has walls of TVs and couches. This morning Marion Bartoli did a few last stretches in preparation for her afternoon match on Lenglen. Judy and Jamie Murray talked about getting something to eat.
From there you take a turn and walk down a long hall lined with posters and abstractly designed mirrors. Dark-clothed security guards talk in pairs. The scene is casual; players in shorts and flip-flops, with perma-tans and wet hair, greet each other with up-grip handshakes and half-hugs. If you hadn’t see these smiling 20-somethings on TV, would you even consider trying to get their autographs?
When you turn the corner and begin to ascend the ramp, you realize that there are plenty of people who want the players' chicken scratch on a piece of felt, or who just want to get any kind of glimpse of them—to point and say, “That’s Nicolas Mahut, right there!” As you continue upward, dozens of faces, hats, and sunglasses along the railing stare down at you. The hunger for fame, and the paucity of celebrities who appear at any given time, is great enough that even when you’re identified as a nobody, the eyes stay on you for a split-second longer, just in case they’ve been mistaken.
Roland Garros has style and tradition and good ice cream, but it also creates that essential, and essentially weird, dynamic needed for modern show business: the scarcity of the star. Of course you couldn’t have the players walking around among the great French unwashed, but there’s a strange hierarchy around that ramp. The athletes, dressed for a pool party, watch the tube, play video games, and pick at pasta, while the press sits and writes about them across the hall, and fans gather above them for a sighting.
This is how pro sports—show-biz for sweaty people—functions and thrives. There’s excitement and fantasy and vicarious pleasure in the star system, and the French Open probably wouldn’t be desirable to attend if it were as relaxed and open and status-free as your local club tournament. The fans have status, too; they have tickets.
Still, the ramp is weird. I’ve never seen anyone famous walk up it.