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It would have felt more fitting if Gaël Monfils went out with a roar, with a five-set epic matching the reputation he has built as tennis’s great showman.
He may have preferred the kind of bow he made at his home French Open earlier this year, a thrilling five-set fightback that ended well after midnight, or one that had a few more of his dazzling signature shots, like the mid-air forehand that stole the show in his first-round win this week.
Instead, the final grand slam match of Monfils’s 22-year career was a quieter farewell, a straight-sets 6-3, 6-4, 6-3 second-round US Open defeat to No 14 seed Learner Tien on Thursday night. The 40-year-old has said he will retire after this season, and the result ensured he will finish his career as one of the greatest players to never win a major.
The 20-year-old Tien wore Monfils out, forcing him into long rallies and constant movement along the baseline on a muggy night at Louis Armstrong Stadium. The flashes were fewer than usual for the Frenchman, but he still kept the crowd entertained, praising the “unbelievable atmosphere” and saying he was proud to have given it his all.
“You always want to give a little bit more, you want to stay a little bit more,” he said. “I gave my absolute all, but Learner was a really tough one tonight.”
Monfils came up in the golden age of the men’s tour, in the era of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray. He has won nearly 600 singles matches and collected $25m in earnings, but reached the last four of a grand slam just twice, at Roland Garros in 2008 and here at Flushing Meadows in 2016. And yet his style – the tweeners, the overheads, the movement that swung the momentum of points – attracted just as many fans and as much acclaim as the silverware would have.
Once ranked as high as sixth, he has dropped to No 311 and earned entry to this US Open on a wildcard. He had only played two tour-level events since Roland Garros. But through this run, he has been his trademark showman self, coming full-circle from the 18-year-old in a baggy yellow tank top who made his US Open debut in 2005 with a grueling five-set loss to Djokovic.
It began in last week’s mixed doubles, where he advanced to the semi-finals playing alongside his wife (and world No 9) Elina Svitolina, and continued against 60th-ranked Paraguayan Adolfo Daniel Vallejo in the first round of the main draw. The 2-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-0 victory there, on the day he turned 40, made him the oldest man to win a US Open match since Jimmy Connors in 1992, and the Armstrong Stadium crowd serenaded the longtime fan favorite by singing “Happy Birthday”.
“I’m just me, Gaël Monfils,” he said, when asked how he wanted to be remembered. “I think I have been the same since I came on tour, with a lot of joy. … The most important for me is how my family lived all these year and how they will remind this ride was unbelievable.”
Thursday night brought a more difficult challenge, against a composed and smart lefty in Tien. Monfils held his own to start, but he was broken in his third service game and began putting his hands on his knees to rest or leaning over to fix his shoe after points.
Tien was content to play long, patient points – he finished with just 20 winners, fewer than Monfils’s 29 – and such a strategy tired his opponent’s legs. In the sixth game of the second set, Monfils leaned over a towel box in the corner of the court after a 20-shot rally. A leaping backhanded volley energized the crowd and Monfils himself, but it couldn’t make up for his 22 unforced errors in the set.
By the third set, even his serve was a taxing effort. He leaned on his racket in front of the baseline before double-faulting twice in the seventh game, where Tien would find the break that swung the match in his favor. The American played remarkable defense in the eighth game, saving break point after a desperate Monfils had held his finger up to the sky asking for just one break following seven unsuccessful previous efforts. (It did not come.)
Time, though, comes for all. Tien, who is into the third round at the US Open for the first time, said he felt grateful to share the court with Monfils and jokingly apologized for all of his drop shots.
“A couple months ago [in Paris], it was really tough, because you don’t really know what to expect and how you will really react,” Monfils said. “It was a little bit tougher for me to handle my emotion and play and perform, because I said that I want to say good-bye but be able to perform well. … It was much better, much easier for me to handle here.”
Tournament organizers presented Monfils with a framed picture in an on-court ceremony. Perhaps he’ll have a new place to hang it soon: ever the master of surprise, he announced in his post-match news conference that his post-tennis life will involve an office job with a Swiss wealth management company.
The ceremony closed with a montage of clips from throughout Monfils’s career on the video board. Few moments from Thursday’s match are likely to end up in future reels, but one captured the night’s scene. In the third game of the second set, up 40-0, he delivered a strong serve and went for a no-look slice on the return. At another time, such a shot could have been a showstopping winner. On this night, it lobbed into the net, and Monfils’s only reaction was to close his eyes and laugh. This is 40, his face seemed to say.
