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Mad to Win: The Tsitsipas Experience Came to Paris and Did Not Disappoint


By: Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Monday June 3, 2019

There is dirt smudged into his back. It covers his blue Adidas top, and there are streaks down his calves and the outside of his thighs. It’s on his socks, his hands, and beneath his fingernails.

The iconic flags above Court Suzanne Lenglen (one for each nation, one for each nation’s Slam, two for FFT) are barely blowing. It’s hot. His face is reddening in the sun.

He is Stefanos Tsitsipas, and he’s not your everyday tennis player. He’s 20 and he’s Greek and the look on his face is tormented—angst-ridden. You’d never know he’s on top of the world right now, the first Greek to win three matches in a row in Paris since 1936. You’d never know he can be introspective, thoughtful.


The first time I saw him at Wimbledon, he stuck his hand out and said “Hello, I’m Stefanos,” as if a reporter standing outside of Interview Room 2 and waiting for him wouldn’t know that.

He takes a moment to berate himself moments after a winner from the racquet of Stan Wawrinka sails past him. Tsitsipas stumbled in the slippery clay on his initial move in the direction of the shot. Wrong-footed, he never had a chance, and this fact pissed him off. The packed crowd bursts into applause, saluting the beloved former champion, and Tsitsipas’ screams aren’t audible until the din recedes.

Sitting in the media seats I can’t figure out what he is so miffed about, or what he has said. Is it the score (he’s down a set but up a break in the fourth) that bothers him? Is it the quality of his last forehand (it was a rocket, angled into the corner)? The oppressive heat on a balmy Paris Sunday, the hottest day by far of the tournament? Or was it simply the fact that perfection is a theoretical concept mangled by reality?

Probably the latter, and frankly, it wouldn’t come as a major surprise if Tsitsipas pondered the existential nature of his fate as an athlete while simultaneously pondering the wicked tailspin of a Wawrinka inside-out forehand.

Unlike virtually all tennis players, Stefanos Tsitsipas’ musings run deep. His words are a never ending stream of consciousness, crooked like the Seine, swerving beyond the clichés that pepper the pressers of the game’s greatest stars.

Some people adore this 20-year-old rising comet of tennis for his philosophical musings and his ever expanding YouTube empire. Others love his old school game, replete with a to-die-for one-handed backhand and a proclivity to rush the net with reckless abandon. Like a soldier that doesn’t expect to come home from battle Tsitsipas is willing to die on the hill of his desire. He doesn’t so much want to win as he wants to empty everything from his body and soul onto the court.

If philosophy and earnestness and effort are your trifecta, Stefanos Tsitsipas is the player for you.

Others dislike what they perceive as immaturity, phony philosophy or spoiled naïveté. When he’s bratty on court they see this as further proof of a disingenuous character.

Love him or loathe him, there’s no denying his unique power to captivate.

He mutters to himself on court in Greek, then in English, then back to Greek for the really vintage stuff. He gesticulates wildly and bobs up and down after failing to convert three consecutive break points against Wawrinka. His long, spindly legs kick him skyward as he exhorts himself while Wawrinka takes the towel and seeks the solace of a second or two of respite.

Wawrinka, 34, will eventually prevail in this high-stakes round of 16 contest, he’ll have won the crowd and won all the big points, and at the end he’ll sweep Tsitsipas into his arms and offer up some type of tennis wisdom that only a veteran of 56 Grand Slams and two career-threatening knee surgeries could possess.

Even Wawrinka couldn’t help but be moved by a kid who will dive for volleys on a clay court. What Tsitispas emanates is real and tangible and can be felt 30 rows up in the stands.

Red dust-caked, the Greek barely bothered to brush himself off before the next point. He did this several times in the five-hour, nine-minute contest and when it was over he went to his locker and cried before coming to press and emptying what’s left of his emotions onto a roomful of reporters.

Asked what he hoped to learn from a heartbreaking defeat that saw his hopes and dreams of realizing all his tennis ambitions in one wild fortnight in Paris (you get the sense this kid believes he can win and win now), Tsitsipas was quick to answer.

“I have no idea,” he said. “My mind is so empty right now. I cannot even think, so I don't know.”

For once Tsitsipas is concise. He’s prone to spitting out long answers in press conferences that meander like dandelion seeds in a soft summer breeze. From a central topic he’ll wander off into tributaries of self-analysis and desperately try to circle back as he loses the cadence.

“What was your question again,” he’ll say.

But on this day, after THIS loss, there’s no meandering. He’s empty like a stone. Shot. Gave it all, expected it all, lost it all. Eight break points went begging and still he could not liberate himself from whatever was holding him back.

Then, it was over. Wawrinka stuck him with the dagger: a side-spinning, perfectly struck backhand slice on the Swiss’ second match point kissed the line sending the crowd into euphoria.

“It's the worst feeling ever,” Tsitsipas said. “Especially when you lose. You don't want to be in my place.”

That’s the Stefanos Tsitsipas experience in a nutshell. It sucks you in. It makes you feel the eternity of the game, the tennis-as-chess-and-boxing ethos, the warrior mentality—all at once. In him there are McEnroes. In him there are Borgs. In him there is even a dash of Federer.

And at 20 years of age he is raw and teeming and mad to live and mad to win and full of more je ne sais quoi than the rest of the ATP’s generation next combined.

He fell short of his ultimate goal in Paris, but the unbridled openness of his pursuit left a message loud and clear. He lost this battle but he’ll win the war and he won’t die on that hill until he has done so.

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