There was all kinds of love on Court Suzanne Lenglen on Sunday in Paris. As Stan Wawrinka and Stefanos Tsitsipas engaged in what would end up as a five hour and nine minute thriller, one fan decided he couldn’t hold in his strong affection for Wawrinka anymore.
Early in the fifth set one could hear the words “Je t’aime Stan” belted out from the rafters. After a brief pause Wawrinka looked up to where the sound came from and blew a kiss in the man’s direction. The crowd burst out into laughter but before the interlude was over a Tsitsipas fan shouted “Je t’aime Stefanos!”
Tsitsipas smiled, acknowledged the love, and the moment soon faded as the battle resumed.
The incredible experience of this battle was summed up by Tsitsipas in a heartfelt Instagram post later in the evening:
“It’s something unique,” he wrote. “There is loads of charm and charisma to it. We both struggled, we both went beyond our limits, we both experienced luck and our destiny was drawn on that Parisian court after five hours of physical and mental suffering. I really don’t know if what I feel right now is positive or negative. There is no bipolar effect to it. Today I learned something that no school, no classroom, no teacher would be able to teach. It’s called, living life!”
Today I felt something that I can’t really explain. Today was the first time in my entire life, in my twenty years of existence that I felt that “aura”, the real definition of the word, competition. Not any kind of competition though, it felt different than any other time, any other battle, any other moment on the tennis court. There is something about today that I won’t be able to explain. It’s a feeling that makes me appreciate the sport that I chose to pursue in my life as a career. The bitter taste of that loss is something unexplainable. @stanwawrinka85 makes our sport real and pragmatic. It’s something that’s rare to find in the world that we are at. It’s something unique. There is loads of charm and charisma to it. We both struggled, we both went beyond our limits, we both experienced luck and our destiny was drawn on that Parisian court after five hours of physical and mental suffering. I really don’t know if what I feel right now is positive or negative. There is no bipolar effect to it. Today I learned something that no school, no classroom, no teacher would be able to teach. It’s called, living life!
A post shared by Stefanos Tsitsipas (@stefanostsitsipas98) on