FRENCH OPEN 1983 - MEN'S SINGLES SEMI-FINALS

by

Rex Bellamy

José Higueras spent three hours and three-quarters playing the champion, Mats Wilander, in roasting heat during the French Championships here yesterday. Wilander won 7-5, 6-7, 6-3,    6-0, then Higueras, still streaming with sweat (and trying to hide the disappointment of defeat and the pain from an overworked elbow), went to a press conference and answered a barrage of questions with patient courtesy. Eventually there was a pause and Higueras asked quietly: "May I say something about Mats?" Of course. "It is a pleasure to play against him", Higueras went on, carefully sorting out the words he wanted in a language that was not his own. "He is a very good tennis professional. We need players like him at the top, to help the game." That was all. There was no need to gild the lily... 

Could it be that such concepts as "a sportsman and a gentleman" and "fair play" are making a comeback in professional tennis? Yannick Noah beat Christophe Roger-Vasselin 6-3, 6-0, 6-0 in the most embarrassingly one-sided semi-final since Bjorn Borg beat Vitas Gerulaitis in 1979. But there was a sympathetic rapport between them, first on court and then later, in the things each had to say about the other. Higueras and Wilander, diligent though they were in their attention to business, observed the sporting code as if it was the natural thing to do...  

The players concerned, mind you, are by no means softies. Wilander, with all the battle-hardened wisdom of a boy doing a man's job, firmly made the point that he came here to win the championship rather than to entertain the public. The reminder was superfluous. He is more aggressive, more familiar with the forecourt, than Borg was at the same age. But the two Swedes play much the same way and are boring to watch (one still thinks of Borg in the present tense) because of their excessive dependence on top-spun drives from the baseline*...

(Extracts from Game Set and Deadline: a Tennis Odyssey, London, Kingswood Press, 1986)

(Originally from The Times, June 1983)

*But in later Grand Slam tournaments Mats often played a much more varied all-court game, and Rex Bellamy praised him for this - "Spider".