With no French player present in the third round at Roland Garros, French tennis has experienced an unprecedented fiasco since 1968. On the side of the authorities, we are now thinking about solutions to allow future generations to emerge.

While being careful: "The work will be long."

ANALYSIS

Audiences in good shape, an enthusiastic public despite the health restrictions, good matches ... While the first week of the 2021 edition of Roland-Garros is about to end, there are many reasons for satisfaction for the organization of the Grand Slam tournament.

But a cloud has come to tarnish this good record: the enormous fiasco of the French players, with no representative in the third round, a situation unprecedented since 1968 and the beginning of the Open era.

And as the golden generation of Tsonga-Gasquet-Monfils-Simon approaches retirement, such a failure inevitably raises the question of the training and strategy of the governing bodies of French tennis.  

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Questioned by Europe 1, the new DTN Nicolas Escudé recognizes that the work "will be long".

"To tell you that next year, we will have four or five players in the second week, I don't know."

"But all is not black, all is not dramatic," insists the former winner of the Davis Cup.

"We have young players who are emerging, we must try to support them, help them, train as many young people as possible. The more we will have, the more we will give ourselves the chance to be able to have a good number of French men and women in the second week of all Grand Slam tournaments. "

"A somewhat long agenda to carry out"

Invited on Saturday on Europe 1, the new general manager of the FFT, Amélie Oudéa-Castera, she gave some avenues of work to allow a good renewal of talents in French tennis.

"It's going to be a bit of a long agenda", she confides in turn, indicating that "a meeting is scheduled for Sunday with all the alumni, who will help us find the right keys for French tennis and the renewal of the high level ".

EDITORIAL - 

Roland-Garros: the French tennis fiasco, a bad for a good?

What are these leads?

"Rely on each other's experience, find a better articulation with private structures, work more on the mind, have a better approach to training, with a selection that is not too early, but at the same time attention and a requirement for technique that is stronger than ever, to prepare our young people for the tennis of the future.

"A reinvention of our federal courses"

Another track, "a reinvention of our federal courses, so that there is at the same time emulation, the capacity to develop individualized training situations, but at the same time this collective which grows by steps".

Could a form of mentoring with the more experienced players like a Jo-Wilfried Tsonga or a Richard Gasquet be put in place? "We will discuss with them tomorrow morning," replied Amélie Oudéa-Castera on Saturday. "This is a first workshop (workshop, editor's note) that we organize with them. The first in a series that will be regular to take the best ideas of each and continue to improve, to support the strategy that we have defined." And find the second week at term?