Arthur Rinderknech won three Challenger titles -
Arthur Rinderknech is not far from entering the top 100, but he must go through the hunt for points in a period made more complicated by the Covid-19.
Apart from the big tournaments, the vast majority of players have seen their daily lives strongly impacted by the pandemic for a year.
It's not easy to climb the ranks of world tennis these days.
Arthur Rinderknech, 136th player in the world, knows a thing or two about it.
Coming from American university sport - he joined the United States after the baccalaureate - the 24-year-old Frenchman has been on the “secondary” professional circuit for only two and a half years.
Its rise is intended to be linear and has met with honorable success.
In 2020 he won two Challengers (to which we can add a lost final) and this year he won in Istanbul.
But the uncertainty generated by the health context coupled with the need for points to climb the standings make it more difficult to schedule a tennis season outside the top 100. With the consequences of a risk of injury or overwork.
A trap into which Rinderknech more or less fell before changing his mind.
In recent weeks, he has tried his luck in several main circuit tournaments (Montpellier, Rotterdam and now Marseille).
Interview in the shade of the cadets of men's tennis.
What did your start-of-year calendar look like?
There was obviously the Australian Open qualifying which was a big goal.
We were uncertain for a long time given the situation, we did not know if they would be held in Australia or elsewhere.
Then, we knew it would be done elsewhere but without a specific location and we finally knew a week before that it would be done in Doha.
We had to acclimatize to other conditions at the last moment.
Planning everything at the last moment is what has been happening for a year.
You don't go far from the main draw at the Australian Open ...
I lost in the last qualifying game after two interesting games.
When I look at what happened there and the two weeks of strict quarantine that the qualifiers had to observe upon arriving, I'm not so unhappy that I lost.
It's hard to say.
But I don't think going to lock myself in a hotel room for two weeks at that point would have been the best sporting decision I could have made.
Obviously, playing a legendary tournament like Melbourne is a dream and I hope to have the chance to do it very soon, but given the conditions and the fact that I had just come out of a three-week land preparation, it was a little spoil everything.
For the moment I am aiming more at the athlete than the madness or the prize money.
Basically, it was not profitable to ruin a physical preparation to take three sets by Djokovic in the wake of the first round?
There you have it.
We can't know who we're going to fall into but seeing how delicate the situation was at the time, it was a risk that I preferred not to take to make sure I played three, four or five tournaments on the same amount of time.
As a potential lucky loser I would have entered [in the bubble] but I would have been the last or the penultimate.
So I would have been in limbo the whole time, and psychologically it would have been difficult to have those two weeks of strict quarantine locked in my room without knowing if I was going to play.
For you who aspire to climb the ranks in ATP and who are in an ascending phase, how penalizing all this is?
It's delicate.
From a programming standpoint, you're never sure what's going to happen in the next few weeks, so you tend to think "I'm playing as much as I can, we don't know what's going to happen." pass so I connect ”.
And then we realize that this is not the right solution.
You have to keep working, do your training weeks which are important, work to be better and not fall into the trap of playing every week and chasing points and wins.
Because victories only come with the level of play and progress comes through training.
It's a bit of a trap to avoid and I've fallen into it over the past few months.
Especially since the recovery after the first confinement.
I wanted too much to continue when I should have known how to make cuts to retrain, rest, recharge my batteries and start a tournament at 100%.
With what consequences?
Injuries ?
We tend to want to grab as long as we can, to pull the rope.
Obviously it leads at times to big fatigue or small injuries.
Consequently, it is neither competition nor training but total rest at home that you need.
And you are the loser.
But we can't complain because the circuit continues to move forward and kudos to ATP for that.
When I see players wanting to stop the circuit or stuff like (sighs).
I can't understand how we can say such things when we know that there is a whole ecosystem that lives and depends on it.
That some top players say you have to stop, it's too hard to travel… We're the only ones who can travel, so it's a little tricky to complain about it.
Since you are talking about the top players, Djokovic recently mentioned the possibility of playing several tournaments at the same place in a bubble, Nadal spoke to him about protecting the ranking of the players.
What is your take on these ideas?
In general I really like Nadal's vision on the circuit.
The organization that is there is doing their best to make sure that the tournaments take place and do what they can for us.
Now, the principle of tennis is really to travel all over the world, it is countries that organize tournaments via a number of cities.
If we restrict ourselves to one place over a number of weeks or even months, it goes a bit against the basic principles of tennis which is spread all over the planet.
Is there a risk of seeing the circuit cut in half?
I think it has to be equal, that each player has his chance to go as high as possible.
It is important not to cut the two different circuits.
Because there are the very young players who play very well and who could potentially very quickly enter the top 150 or the top 100 and who are currently 500th, 600th, 800th… These players have the right to dream and wanting to go high.
I don't think we should cut that, it's not at all fair for all the players.
For example, the system should not protect players in the 100. We would potentially end up with players who have not won a match for a long time and remain in the 100 and others behind who knock on the door.
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