Hugo Gaston, KIM, Jo Wilfried Tsonga discussed on The Passing Shot Tennis Podcast
Automatic TRANSCRIPT
Kim today is the 24th of May, and we are here to catch up on round one at the French Open at passing shot headquarters. It's been a lovely, last few days at Roland Garros. I love the Sunday start. I was a little bit hungover, so it was just great to just stroll downstairs, lie on my sofa and just watch some watch some Grand Slam tennis and it's been a great start. We've been had some we've had some shocks, particularly in the women's side. It's great to see rapha back as well. And of course Kim, we've got Hugo Gaston delighting the local crowd after the bittersweet ceremony of Jo Wilfried tsonga against Casper Ruud, his final match. Now firmly in retirement, but he did give it a good go, didn't he? He did. But I mean, aside from songa, losing, and obviously saying goodbye, we've been a pretty good day for French players, which we will get on to later. But yeah, I'm pleased Gaston was able to come through that. He lost like 9 games on the trot in this match with Alex de menor and saw him break his racket into and I was thinking oh dear, but yeah, he came through entertaining the locals again. I'll always remember him in 2020 when he I think beat Stan and then came close with Dominic team. So yeah, always always up for a bit of Hugo Gaston we also got the, I feel like what is courtesy now Benoit paire 24 double faults in his match against Ilya ivashka. I really enjoyed that he did that and then as soon as that happened and he lost he was back out to chatrier to wish his friend tsonga along with lots of other kind of glittering kind of French players Gasquet was there. You'll see one was there as well who was also retiring so it was a real kind of emotional moment which we will get onto. There has also been big developments outside of the French Open that we need to catch up on first Kim. We are going to get obviously to your collector set and predictions as well. But we've got to start with Wimbledon ranking points. They're not going to be there and that's going to be on the ATP and WTA tours. They've both decided to strip ranking points from Wimbledon this year and it's been quite fascinating to see what the reactions are of various players on social media after their matches as well. I feel like some of these round one matches were very, very quick, 40 minutes for maybe for women's matches or straight three sets, regulation job for the men and it was actually more like, okay, well are they going to say their press conference about ranking points and the fact that there's not going to be any at Wimbledon? Yeah, we haven't had too much controversy from the French Open so far. So it certainly Wimbledon is filling that gap nicely. Unfortunately, yeah, I think we were wondering if this would actually be a decision that would be taken, but it has been and yeah, no one is going to be allowed to gain any ranking points from Wimbledon this year on the ATP or WTA side. And it's also going to be the case that ranking points from 2021 will drop off. So it's not even like they're freezing the points. They're going to lose everything that they had. So Novak Djokovic is despite the fact he's probably going to win it again. He will lose 2000 points. Yeah, so he's really been affected quite a lot. I think it's almost probably like very likely he will lose the number one ranking already. So it does make a mockery, I think, of the ranking system when it changes something like whose world number one and the weeks someone might be reigning for when through no fault of their own in this case, they are just losing points. I mean, I understand why the ATP and WTA have done it, but I think they should probably have maybe frozen the points rather than letting them drop off. I mean, especially Kim, because if that does happen, if this does happen and Novak Djokovic, as you said, would lose the world number one ranking. He could lose it to a Russian. He could lose it to Daniel later. A bit Mickey Mouse, a bit of a circus, you know, I think we've kind of sort of expected it over the years. We've seen these sorts of things kind of play out and I think, again, kind of fundamentally Wimbledon and the tours have very different kind of stances on the war at the moment between Russia and Ukraine and it felt like in the ATP and WTA. They sort of, I think, conceded on the tour events in the UK because there will be ranking points there, but they just felt at the Grand Slam at Wimbledon. It was a complete non starter and it's interesting to see it feels like the players are almost this kind of collateral in the middle and that's where I think you're seeing lots of frustration. I was actually surprised a little bit that Novak Djokovic wasn't kind of a little bit more angry about how many points he's going to defend because we've seen other players a little bit less reserved, for example, martan future which he got to the quarterfinals last year. And he is a very good player, but because he's losing ranking points, he's going to be outside the top hundred, which doesn't seem that doesn't seem particularly fair. Denis Shapovalov as well, obviously he had a good run at Wimbledon last year. He's not particularly happy about it. So it's interesting to see how it feels like the players, I feel like the reaction has been more negative than positive. There have been a few players who have backed the decision, Sloane Stephens, understandably. She's on the WTA player council. She said, I think the decision that was taken was the correct one. So you can see there's people on both sides of the argument, but I think at the moment, I think the big question is, what does this mean in terms of availability? Who's going to play? There's already doubts about Naomi Osaka. There's a big, you know, it's going to be very interesting because these players are going to have to make this decision at some point..