Robinson Le Meur, -4/6, 23, sometimes gives up tournaments so as not to fly. He told Ecolosport on 7 October. I read it on my phone, towel still over my shoulder, between two sets on Tuesday night. And I felt understood.
Because I give up tournaments too. Liège, I’ve never played it. Mons neither. Nobody ever asked me why. Now I have an answer: the planet. It’s not my level, it’s a position.
He says: “Scraping together a few places in the world rankings isn’t going to change my life.” That, I validate technically. Me, I wait for my AFT (Belgium’s French-speaking tennis federation) ranking in January like a verdict, and it doesn’t change my life either. It doesn’t change at all, actually. C30.4, a club-level ranking, and a transitional one. I put it like him: I’m sacrificing a bit of sporting performance. The difference is that he has performance to sacrifice.
He crossed paths with Novak Djokovic at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. I crossed paths with a B-15 at the clubhouse bar in April. We talked strings. It’s much the same energy, two practice sessions away, mind you.
The young lady gives up tournaments by train as well, I believe. And by car. And on foot.
He finds the FFT’s Fresque écologique du tennis “a bit light”. It has reached 37,523 people since 2021. None of them on court 4 of my club. Then again, nothing ever reaches court 4 of my club. Not even the floodlights.
It’s true, we checked: Tennis Actu.
