Adrian Mannarino is 38, ranked 83rd on the ATP, beat Flavio Cobolli, world number seven, then lost 6-2, 6-4 to Karen Khachanov in Shanghai. Afterwards he told L’Equipe: “For now, tennis is the only thing I know (smile).”
Silly question, but are you allowed to say that in a press conference? Since September I’ve noted down every post-match answer in my notebook. “One match at a time.” “I’m staying focused.” “We’ll see.” This one has a smile written in brackets. I had never seen a smile noted in a transcript.
He added: “As long as I’m still competitive, why not carry on? One more year or two, I don’t know, we’ll see where it takes me.” I go back over the logic. He knows one thing. He likes that thing. He’s competitive at it: he did beat a top-10 player and reached the quarter-finals in Chengdu just before. So he carries on. I looked for the flaw in the reasoning on the 7.32 train. I hadn’t found it by Ottignies.
There’s one sentence I don’t understand: Khachanov leads 6-0 in their head-to-heads. Six wins to nil, and he comes back. In football, you’d call that a curse. Here, I’m told it’s “the tour”.
It’s very simple, Maxime: he wins the seventh. I’m not saying when.
I also read that he won 29% of the points behind his second serve. I asked the newsroom whether that was low. Three answers, three opinions. I put a question mark in the notebook, next to the smile.
Anyway, I still have a lot to learn. He, apparently, only has a year or two.
It’s true, we checked: Tennis Actu.
