Home is where the hurt is at the French Open
The Australian Open and the US Open have also not witnessed a home men’s champion for decades.
IT HAS been 40 years since a French player last won the men’s singles title at Roland-Garros, and Yannick Noah’s 1983 achievement is unlikely to be matched this year when the second Major of the tennis season starts on Sunday (May 28).
However, the French are not alone when it comes to discovering that home is where the hurt is as title droughts for male players have been a regular feature at the other three Grand Slams.
At the Australian Open, Mark Edmondson has pride of place as the last home player to lift the men’s title – 47 years ago in 1976.
Edmondson, ranked 212 in the world at the time, stunned compatriot John Newcombe, a seven-time Slam champion, in four sets when the tournament was still played on grass. It was dubbed the “Battle of the Moustaches”.
Edmondson’s story enchanted fans. To earn enough money for his tennis travels, he even worked as a janitor and travelled to the championship site at Kooyong by tram.
“You can’t say it would never happen again, but I think it’d be nearly impossible,” he said in 2016, the 40th anniversary of his win.
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Edmondson, who remains the lowest-ranked Grand Slam winner, went on to reach the semi-finals in Australia again in 1981 and Wimbledon a year later. For good measure, he also pocketed five Grand Slam men’s doubles titles.
Since that 1976 final, it’s been a tale of near-misses for Australian men at their home Major. John Marks (1978), Kim Warwick (1980), Pat Cash (1987 and 1988) and Lleyton Hewitt (2005) all came close, but finished as runners-up.
There has been better luck on the women’s side. Australia’s Evonne Goolagong won the 1976 title with four more championship seasons coming for home players, the most recent of which was Ashleigh Barty in 2022. That ended a 44-year wait.
Yannick Noah remains the last Frenchman to win a home Roland-Garros title, thanks to his straight-sets victory over defending champion Mats Wilander of Sweden in the 1983 final.
In fact, he is the last Frenchman to win a men’s title at any of the four Majors.
Helping him celebrate on court in Paris was his father Zacharie, a former Cameroonian footballer.
“For him, it has been very hard. Every time he came here, he would go back to Cameroon with more white hair,” said Noah, who was 23 at the time of his triumph in Paris. Noah spent his early years in the African country before returning to Europe to pursue his tennis dream.
His record at the other Slams was mediocre – a semi-final in Australia, three quarter-finals at the US Open, and the third round at Wimbledon.
Henri Leconte, in 1988, was the last Frenchman in a French Open final while Gael Monfils (2008) and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (2013 and 2015) were semi-finalists.
Mary Pierce, in 2000, remains the only Frenchwoman in the Open era to win her home Slam.
Over at the US Open, Andy Roddick is America’s most recent men’s champion there, winning in 2003 with a straight-sets victory over Juan Carlos Ferrero.
A year later, Switzerland’s Roger Federer won the first of his five consecutive titles in New York.
Andre Agassi (2005) and Roddick (2006) both succumbed to the Swiss, and an American man has not made the final at Flushing Meadows since.
Roddick also had the misfortune to lose three Wimbledon finals – all to Federer.
Since Roddick’s win in New York, the women’s title was swept on four occasions by Serena Williams and then by Sloane Stephens in 2017.
And in London, a 77-year wait for a British man to win Wimbledon was ended when two championships were secured in the space of just three years.
Andy Murray rode to the rescue of national pride in 2013 with victory over career-long rival Novak Djokovic in the final. For good measure, he claimed another in 2016. He was also runner-up to Federer at Wimbledon in 2012, becoming the first British finalist since Bunny Austin in 1938.
Until Murray’s landmark win in 2013, Fred Perry’s third and final triumph at the All-England Club in 1936 represented the last time a British man had won Wimbledon.
As an amateur, Perry also won three titles at the US Championships and one each in France and Australia.
On the women’s side, Virginia Wade was the last British home champion in 1977. AFP
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