Watching Gael Monfils play tennis is the sharpest of double-edged swords: It’s as jaw-dropping as it is exasperating. On Tuesday night the Frenchman inspired more than his usual share of each of these reactions over the course of his four-set loss to Rafael Nadal. At the end of it all, when he’d belted his final futile jumping forehand into the tape, I was left asking which side of the Monfils experience has the upper hand: Are his circus-act exploits must-see tennis, regardless of the outcome? Or is the sight of all that potential being squandered because of a complete lack of goal-driven focus just disheartening in the end?
I can’t deny that I’d rather watch Monfils than a dull steady striver like Tommy Robredo, who’s ranked two spots behind him. I would almost certainly learn more about how to win tennis matches from the Spanish veteran, but that’s not really why we watch, is it? We don't want to be instructed; as Monfils knows too well for his own good, we want to be thrilled. Whatever its drawbacks, his game offers possibilities: That you’ll see a shot you’ve never seen before; that you’ll stare at the court in wide-eyed disbelief after one of his atomic forehands; that he’ll celebrate a winning point like a cheerleader who has gone off his meds (sorry, old line). There’s also the possibility, in the back of your head, that you’re seeing the future of tennis, one that will place the pros on some higher, more acrobatic plane of play. But so far it’s a future that’s been deferred, at least by Monfils. It’s been left to the guy who was on the other side of the net on Tuesday.
When they arrived on tour a few years ago, both Nadal and Monfils, who are now 23, heralded a new, muscular athleticism. It started in their genes. Nadal’s uncle was a professional soccer player; Monfils’ father was the same. It seemed at the time that, as the sport became the province of the explosive power-baseliner, that the lean and lanky tennis player of old would soon be overwhelmed by an onslaught of raw, ripped athletes, guys who could face up to the spinning bombs that came off their opponents’ polyesther strings. That hasn’t happened, exactly—Federer and Murray are still closer to the old mold—but it did for one night at Flushing. Nadal-Monfils, a match where every ball sounded like it was shot out of a cannon, was a brief glimpse into a tennis future that may never come to pass.
It may never come to pass because this kind of turbo-charged, above-the-net, sliding-on-hard-courts style isn’t sustainable for most humans. Monfils, a daredevil who puts his body in harm's way and who has been hobbled by dozens of injures over the years, even said after the match that he can only play that well for about an hour and a half. It was a stunning hour and a half, for sure. By game three, Monfils had already tracked down a Nadal drop volley with disdainful ease, sent a chipped backhand past him, and demanded that the crowd in Ashe Stadium get to its feet. Over the course of the next two sets, the word “Jesus” must have spontaneously popped out of my mouth a hundred times. I said it while staring at slapped Monfils' strokes that detonated in the corners. But I also said it while throwing my head back in disgust after the same shot detonated 10 feet wide.
Monfils entertains and mystifies between points as well. What was he rapping to himself last night? Why would he expend the energy on something so beside the point and ultimately distracting? And why, even as he lost the second set and fell behind in the third, did he continue to walk around nodding his head as if everything were under control and he was enjoying the challenge from this pipsqueak in the yellow shirt? Monfils plays in a dangerous state of unreality. It's a place where a winner hit in the second game is as important as one he might hit in a tiebreaker; where an hour and a half of all-out tennis is preferable to conserving your energy so you have a chance of actually winning the match; where you must try to put a forehand on the line at 100 mph because, because, well, because you can.
If anything, Monfils made Nadal look even more impressive. The Spaniard is the product of two forces working at very effective cross-purposes: His pro-athlete genetics and a lifetime of stoical discipline from his uncle Toni. His shots were every bit as spectacular as Monfils’, his celebrations every bit as infectious and smile-inducing, but there was substance behind the style. Where Monfils was aiming for the line, Nadal was putting the ball 2 feet inside it with topspin and following the ball forward. Where Monfils was playing to the crowd with his exhortations, Nadal was using his, as he always does, to reinforce his own desire to win the match. The difference can be boiled down to this telling little observation: From the start of his career, Monfils has made eye contact with people in the crowd. From the very beginning of his, Nadal has played as if there’s nobody watching.
Nadal has made himself the future of the sport because he has submitted to something we often think of as a thing of the past: discipline. Monfils submits to nothing but the joy he gets from jumping high and hitting a fantastic shot. Every tennis player knows that it's an addictive feeling, and it's also a joy for every tennis fan to see. But it’s the sport's version of a recreational drug: It's ultimately an ephemeral pleasure, because it’s not tied to any accomplishment that we recognize as meaningful—i.e. winning. Nadal’s four-set victory, in which he played some of his finest tennis of the year, in which he pushed himself to an emotional peak for the first time in months, in which he may have flipped his switch back to overdrive for the rest of this tournament, was the much more satisfying entertainment. Let’s hope that Monfils was watching his opponent in his moment of triumph. Rafa's drop to the court and quick-step to the net was the most joyous celebration of the evening, because it was the only one that mattered.