You begin a trip to the French Open looking for the French in it. As you make your way through the mass of humanity on the central pathway at Roland Garros, you notice the foreign elements: A happy cry of “C’est bon!” out of one ear, an abrupt “D’accord” out of the other, and, for the first time in years, the scrape of a metal cigarette lighter right behind you. You notice strange brands of sneakers, women with big round brown eyes, men wearing pink scarves, scowling teenage boys with their hair combed from one ear to the other, giggling teenage girls gathered in a circle, whispering.
Teenage boys scowling. Teenage girls giggling. Does that sound very foreign to you? Don’t you see that every day in every town in America? By the end of the first week at the French Open, you might stop noticing the French in it as much. You might, if you’ve been to Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, begin to think that the audiences—sporty, casual, upper middle class—at these three tournaments aren't all that different for each other. If anything, it’s the crowds at Flushing Meadows that stand out as the ritziest. The division between day sessions and night sessions at the U.S. Open, which doesn’t exist (yet) at Wimbledon or the French, has created a fan division—bus-trip families during the day; black-clad Manhattan Martini-drinkers at night—that you don’t find here.
So on my last day at Roland Garros, on the tournament's middle Sunday, after a week of acclimating myself to the talk and the smoke, I took my notebook and braved the cold air and the low clouds to see what the French Open looked like, one item at a time.
I found:
—Security guards and ushers in spiffy red Roland Garros blazers calling out avancé! avancé!* outside the front gates. If you come to the tournament, this might be the first word you hear as you make the long walk from the metro along the Bois de Boulogne to the tournament grounds. The ushers and security guards yell it for minutes on end at the crowds swarming toward them. The idea is to herd—advance—as many people on to another, less-crowded gate down the block. Short of that, the idea is to get them out of the guards' faces as soon as possible.
—The words Simple Dames* at the top of the big women’s draw on site. It means “women’s singles.” As funny as it looks, I like the words above the men’s draw even more: Simple Messieurs.* I imagine it as an encouragement: “Here, let me show you, it’s simple, messieur.”
—The smell of cigarette smoke drifting in from my left. Its warmth feels and smells good on a cool day. The black woman in jeans doing the smoking is taking her time and savoring her cigarette. She looks nothing like a harassed American office worker guiltily puffing as fast as possible so no one glimpses her shameful act. At least you can enjoy your cancer sticks here. At the moment, this one looks pretty tempting.
—One Franklin & Marshall College hat. One retro San Diego Padres jacket, 1970s vintage brown (a very cool uniform, now that I see it in Paris 30 years later). One Los Angeles Lakers sweatshirt.
—One woman in flip-flops. I’ve never seen much of this standard U.S. clothing item here. I’ve learned, very rapidly, that I can live without its flapping sound.
—One young woman, with a smile and a tilt of her head, selling daily programs. This may be the only thing that is incontestably better at Roland Garros than it is at Flushing Meadows. In the past in New York they’ve been sold by a man—no, a guy—who tirelessly bellows, like a hot dog vendor at a baseball game, “Pro-grams, get your official U.S. Open pro-grams right here!” The young Frenchwoman is not bellowng. I doubt she could bellow if she tried.
—Ten people at the top of Suzanne Lenglen stadium, bored by the admittedly boring match between Robin Soderling and Marin Cilic. They try to start the wave during each changeover, but it fails to catch on. They boo the rest of the crowd.
—One thin blond girl at a Haägen-Dazs stand, in a beige jacket that’s much too light for the current temperature. She wraps herself up in her arms. There are no customers for the ice cream she’s selling.
—One young couple kissing next to a sandwich stand. The man, taller, brings his hand out and considers wrapping it around his girlfriend’s back. Perhaps remembering that he’s in public, he lets it drop at the last second.
—Flavia Pennetta, in tennis clothes, with a titanic racquet bag slung over her shoulder, texting.
—One immaculately dressed young brother and sister duo walking down to the pricey seats in Lenglen. He’s in a navy checked suit and pinstriped shirt. She’s wearing a black dress and has her pulled back like a woman 25 years older. Finally, two people I can look at and say: Parisians.
—Three or four young men in various places wearing backwards baseball hats and sweatpants. Two of them are eating pizza as they walk, something my high school French teacher said no self-respecting French person would ever be caught doing.
—Two chefs, in the press dining hall, in stained white chef shirts, sitting back and enjoying their own meal after dinner hours for the media are over. Their hair is still sweaty. They’re smiling broadly.
—John McEnroe walking toward me. He’s heading right in my direction, but swerves out of the way when he sees someone—me—coming at him. I can now say that I have had an affect on John McEnroe’s life.
—A pair of young ushers at Chatrier stadium, one man, one woman, dressed in cream and red Roland Garros usher uniforms. I’ve walked past them dozens of times every day for the last eight days. They’ve been standing the entire time. Finally, today, the girl is sitting down on the staircase that leads to the court. She looks guilty, but too tired to do anything else.
—A chair umpire on Court 1 quietly intoning, “Egalité.” This is the same as deuce—“equality”—which is odd, because as my friend Chris Clarey pointed out in a very good article for the Herald Tribune last week, “deuce” originally was French. It was a mispronunciation of the French “à deux," the same way “love” was a mispronunciation of the French word for egg, “l’oeuf,” slang for zero.
Tennis is a true mixed-breed of British and French—the word is spelled the same way in both languages. The English invented lawn tennis, but the French invented its ancestor, court tennis. “Tennis” comes from the French “tenez,” (“ready!”), the word that servers said to their opponents before they started a point. In case you’re wondering, the word “serve” comes from “service.” The royals who played the game thought putting the ball in play was beneath them. To begin a point, they said “service” to a minion, who would do the menial task of serving for them.
