Nouvelle le champion et nouvelle la champione

“Some people go to Paris to study history; some go to Paris to make it.”

No, this observation is not from Napoleon’s press office. It was the slogan Nike used following Michael Chang’s unexpected victory at the French Open in 1989.

This year, more tennis history was made in the purlieus of Paris. For the first time in a Grand Slam event since the French Open of 2004, two first time Grand Slam champions were crowned at the same event. The breakthrough victories of Mirra Andreeva and Alexander Zverev replicated those of Gaston Gaudio and Anastasia Myskina.

French tennis continued to display its vive la difference by still using linesmen and having central court umpires descend from their chairs to adjudicate on line calls when they have indisputable ‘hawkeye’ images in front of them! Players still do not have courtside chairs with sun protection. Rather, ball kids held a chic umbrella with minimal sun protection above the players.

And contemporary politics was not far away.

Climate change was in the news when unseasonably hot weather bore down on players during the tournament’s first week. The hot weather saw an unprecedented number of walkover victories as players, most notably Sinner wilted. Unseeded players advanced in vast numbers. We saw the first Men’s Grand Slam quarter-final contested by two unseeded Italians, with Arnaldi’s walkover win against Berrettini leading to the first all Italian Grand Slam semi-final which was also won by a walkover by 10^th seeded Flavio Cobolli.

Arnya Sabalenka forgot that imitation is not always the highest form of flattery; her collapse when leading 6-3 4-1 in her quarter final against Russia’s Diana Shnaider was as inexplicable as Sinner’s. Well, not really. After all, Sabalenka has redefined what it is to be mercurial on a tennis court. The shock of the Belarussian’s loss mirrored geopolitics.

Ukraine’s conflict with Russia was played out on Paris’ courts. The French capital was the home of peace conferences during the Vietnam War and we all know about Versailles. Yet, there was no pause in hostilities at the tennis. Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk fresh from her quarter-final victory against countrywoman Elina Svitolina, made a passionate post-match speech on behalf of her country. Kostyuk decried all the Russian players who had not made plain their support for Ukraine. National anthems were not played for Russian players who were ‘flagless’ for the tournament. Kostyuk’s visceral patriotism added spice to her semi-final with Russia’s Mirra Andreeva. Andreeva let her racquet do the talking, yet there was no pre-match photograph or post-match handshake. 

Polish hopes in the Ladies’ singles rested on Iga Swiatek, who, like Sabalenka, had an inexplicable loss in the third round.  Yet it was an unseeded Pole, Maja Chwalinska, who stunned the tennis world by becoming the first qualifier to reach a French Open final. This was a genuine victory for a player who was bedridden with depression four years ago.

Andreeva swept past Chwalsinka in the final. Ironically, Andreeva received her Coupe Suzanne Lenglen trophy from Mary Pierce, the French-Canadian champion of 2000. Pierce beat Andreeva’s coach, Conchita Martinez, in that year's final.

Only the steeliest of detractors could begrudge Zverev his first ever Grand Slam victory. Before his victory Zverev had been the runner-up in Melbourne (2025), Paris (2024) and New York (2020). It was no easy victory, with Cobolli taking the match to five sets.

A Type-1 diabetic, Zverev is the first German male to win the French Open in the Open era and the first player to be coached by his father to a Grand Slam title. He had played 125 matches in Grand Slam tournaments before his breakthrough victory. Cobolli provided sterner opposition than most would have predicted; however, Zverev’s defence, improbable agility and greater consistency of shot making saw him claim the title as the shadows settled over the court after a match lasting over four hours. His victory ended the run of nine consecutive Grand Slam victories by either Alcaraz or Sinner. Understandably, Zverev hugged the trophy with the intensity of the farmer welcoming home his prodigal son.

At tournament’s end, one could be forgiven for thinking that despite many wild results and weather it was, by and large, an event with predictable outcomes:

-The Men’s Doubles (Zeballos & Granollers) and Mixed Doubles champions (Errani & Vavassori) retained their titles as No.1 seeds;

-The Women’s Doubles title was won by the Number 1 seeds, Townsend and Siniakova;

-Although new champions. both Singles’ champions were highly ranked- Andreeva, No.8 and Zverev, No.2; and

-As has become de rigueur, no Australian singles player progressed beyond the third round; Daniil Medvedev lost again in the first round and the ‘Next-Gen’  Americans- Shelton, Paul and Fritz-failed to fly the flag.

Yet, one felt that this predictability, like so much of world politics, is under siege. A revolution, even if not of Bastille proportions, may be upon us.  The hold of major political parties upon government in the Anglosphere is weakening. For the first time in polling history, the populist One Nation party in Australia is now the most preferred political party in Australia. Remarkably bereft of policies, aside from pronounced concerns about the rate of immigration, One Nation’s appeal rests on it not being one of the two major Left/Right parties who have governed Australia since World War One. Ditto the Reform Party in England.

And who can honestly say that in our Trumpian/post Trumpian world that the Republican and Democrat parties in America resemble those that charted American politics for the last century and a quarter? Every point of consensus seems shattered. Do you think any previous President would have countenanced staging a UFC Championship contest on the White House lawn to ‘celebrate’ 250 years of American independence?

Arguably, at no point since the end of World War Two have there been so many doubts about the efficacy of a recognised international world order. The Iranian War drags on along with a sense of permanent imbroglio in the wider Middle-East. Treaty obligations have become chimeras. Even America, Australia’s staunchest ally, cannot guarantee it will deliver the submarines promised under the AUKUS treaty. The old world of tariff wars is new again.

Tennis now moves to the genteel grass court season of Europe, culminating in Wimbledon, sans Carlos Alcaraz.  Yet, events during the French Open reminded us that England is also undergoing wider social and political convulsions.

During the French Open the death was announced in England of Lady Pamela Hicks. Aged 97, she was the daughter of Lord Mountbatten and one of the late Queen’s bridesmaids. Her father was the last English Viceroy of India. He oversaw the granting of Indian independence and the bloody partition of India and Pakistan in the late 1940s.  India was long described as the jewel in the crown of England’s empire. Pamela Hicks was witness to the first major gale of the “winds of change” that blew away England’s seemingly indissoluble empire.

Today in England Anglo-Indian relations are again the catalyst of political protest. The murder of an American student, Henry Nowak, by a Sikh has become an international incident. It is alleged that police attending the scene of his death did not attend to Nowak’s cries for help, believing the Sikh’s claim that he had acted in self-defence after being racially vilified by Nowak.

Vice-President Vance has declared that Nowak would not have died if England had better controlled its immigration. Reform’s Nigel Farage has stated that the tragedy has confirmed that politically correct “two-tier” policing has taken over England, which may well be heading towards a summer of discontent.

On the mundane political front the most successful English Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has written an open letter to Keir Starmer urging him to recognise the failure of his policies, especially his slavish devotion to a Net-Zero energy future. I could have saved Blair the trouble by sending him my recent analysis of the remarkably similar and, increasingly futile, directions of the English and Australian Prime Ministers.

Even a fortnight of tradition at Wimbledon, with an entrée of Serena Williams returning to play doubles at the Queen’s Club, may not be enough to calm the world’s increasingly turbulent political waters, churned up by economic pressures, dissent and disillusionment.