After his elimination in the first round of Roland-Garros, Gilles Simon took height on the current evolution of the game. And there is no dead hand. It demands a little common sense on the part of the refereeing body. To chase away a sufficiently important stress with the Covid-19 tests that players take to go from one tournament to another.
Again his spat with the Serbian referee Marijana Veljović on the reading of a trace, Gilles Simon appeared very angry at a press conference after his defeat against Denis Shapovalov on Tuesday in the first round of Roland-Garros (6 -2, 7-5, 5-7, 6-3). He is currently unhappy with a lot of things on the circuit. The rules have evolved with confinement.
For example, ball collectors no longer have the right to bring the towel to the players. This upsets the routine of the players but the French deplores a lack of flexibility of the referees who only apply a protocol to the letter. And with that, “Gilou” takes out the bazooka.
“What’s the point of coming and stressing me to death?”
“I was very angry in Rome as I had never been in my life, after my match against Koepfer, when I took a second warning (note: warning) because in a match of three hours, two time you make a mistake, that is to say that once you did not go directly to get your towel, the referee started the stopwatch, suddenly you arrive, bam warning. The second time, you pose your racquet and, unfortunately, it falls on the clay, you have clay on the handle, by the time you remove it, you arrive, you are two seconds late, bam, you serve a second ball, you you find yourself serving a second ball at 4/3, break point against you after three hours of the match, “he regretted.
“Do you want to say to the referee: are you here to ruin my life or what? What’s the point of coming to stress me to death? I asked the referee today: when do I ‘arrives on the line and I see that there are 5 seconds left, 6 seconds, I’m ready to serve, I will maybe serve a second later, don’t stress. She says to me:’ yes, but if I ‘comes to zero, I have to do something’. I tell him: ‘you must not do anything at all’. It won’t bother anyone if when I throw the ball… it doesn’t matter, ”he said. he continued.
“We deviated completely”
In this difficult period, where constraints are accumulating, the French would like more benevolence from the refereeing body. “Right now, they want to be so strict about the rules that there is no longer any common sense, but really none. I find that we are in a period where we understand that there are constraints. different things, rules, governments and the like, but at some point we should say to ourselves: this is a particular thing, we are trying to make sure that it goes well, but in fact no, “he said. He insists.
“We are just going completely crazy with completely stupid rules, which have no logic, since they change from week to week, because it is very severe on certain points, very lax on others, etc. Instead of being in a logic of saying to ourselves: we want this to play out and organize a tournament and we do the best we can, we try to minimize the risk, but we do that good. No, you have the impression that there is someone who is there to say: he has his mask, him, look at him in his gallery, he had his mask under his nose. But you want to say: he is in a stand with not a person next to him 50 meters. We have completely deviated. Personally, that’s what weighs me down, “he said.
At 35, the Frenchman still adores his sport as much but you shouldn’t bother him too much otherwise he bites.
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