The press conference took place before the start of play. The French team has landed in Quebec City, where it faces a Canadian side led notably by Félix Auger-Aliassime.
“It’s a nice Davis Cup tie, a lovely tie, a real tie, with the old format, played in a very fine indoor arena, with a big crowd,” Paul-Henri Mathieu said. He added that he had gathered Félix Auger-Aliassime is the local boy in Quebec City, and that Canada have a fine team with a fine leader.
I read it three times. Nice, lovely, real. I asked the newsroom: are those three different things, or the same thing three times? I was told it was the same thing, and then someone said no, not at all.
Silly question, but if this one is a real tie, what does a fake Davis Cup tie look like? Nobody would give me an example. I was told I’d understand eventually. Then I looked up “local boy”: it isn’t an official title, it doesn’t give you an extra point, and yet everyone talks about it as an advantage. Anyway, I still have a lot to learn.
Another discovery this week: in this sport, “a big crowd” counts as sporting information. Mathieu puts it on the same level as the opposition line-up. In football, nobody bothers to specify that people will turn up. Here they do, and the captain sounds genuinely pleased about it.
That leaves “the old format”. The French captain says the atmosphere will be like it used to be, with a crowd firmly behind the home side, and he says so happily. I asked at the club bar what exactly this old format was: the answer lasted forty minutes, three people gave me three versions, and I wrote down nothing usable.
The tie is played indoors, in Quebec City.
It’s true, we checked: We Love Tennis.
