Silly question, but why should a player who won a tournament have to win it again so as not to be punished? Valentin Vacherot won the Shanghai Masters 1000 last year, beating his cousin Arthur Rinderknech in the final. He is going back, from 7 to 18 October, and will try to save as many points as he can. Save. Like furniture in a flood.
I read his comments to Eurosport on the 7.32 train, notebook open on my knees. He said: “I know very well that I’ll drop down the rankings, I’ve prepared for it.” I stopped there. He is world No. 14, he is from Monaco, he won a huge title, and he calmly announces that he is going down. I looked for the word “yet” in the sentence. It isn’t there.
At the newsroom, I asked how it works. I was told that points won stay for a year, then leave. Fine, but where do they go? I checked, and actually nobody knows. They disappear, and we call that defending.
What touched me most is that he talked it over with his coach Benjamin Balleret and his mental coach Isabelle Inchauspé. He said it is the first time he has returned to a place after winning such a big title, “and with so much emotion”. He even has a plan: “I’ll tell myself that every point scored here will count for next year, for other moments.” So he plays this year for next year, with points that will leave the year after. I drew a diagram in my notebook. It looks like an escalator.
It’s very simple: me, I defended my points in Kitzbühel. Well, I defended them in principle.
I held out my notebook to Céline, saying please, so she could check the diagram. She said her own ranking drops in January and she defends nothing at all, it is simply taken away. Anyway, I still have a lot to learn.
It’s true, we checked: We Love Tennis.
