In the 1920s and 30s, the four French tennis players Jean Borotra, Jacques Brugnon, Henri Cochot and Rene Lacoste were known as the "Four Musketeers" and won 20 Grand Slam singles titles between them.
Born between 1984 and 1986 were four more extremely talented French male tennis players, Gilles Simon, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Gael Monfils and Richard Gasquet, all of whom promised great things as teenagers, all of whom have had long, notable, tennis careers, all of whom reached a high point of between 5 and 7 in the singles rankings, none of whom have won a solitary Grand Slam singles title.
None of them will. They are all (perhaps apart from Monfils) in the closing stages of their long, distinguished careers. All four of them are in the Top 40 earners in the history of men's tennis. They're hardly failures. And yet ...
This week, I happened to watch a couple of hours of Gasquet vs Rafael Nadal at the French Open. The two men were born within a couple of weeks of each other. As far back as 2002, it was Gasquet the teen sensation who was the youngest player for decades in the main draw for the French Open. He had the world at his feet ...
...of course, this week, Nadal won, as he always does in Paris. The first set was a bit embarrassing, then the second was close and competitive. For that half hour or so, the two might almost have been competing as equals. But Nadal won it, as he did the third.
It was Richard Gasquet who, a few years ago, inspired me, peculiarly, to write lots of haikus about sport. https://takingsporttooseriously.blogspot.com/2018/02/101-sport-shorts.html (the one about him, which was the first one I wrote, is the fifth one down).
I wanted to capture the poignancy in sporting lives and moments. If you don't love sport for the poignancy, for the passing moments of failure and resignation, you're not doing sport right.
I feel more strongly about Gasquet and Monfils than Tsonga and Simon, somehow. Tsonga was more there-and-thereabouts in a title-threatening way, Simon a little less so and just a little less iconic.
But Gasquet and Monfils just both played/play such beautiful tennis, had such an abundance of talent, Gasquet with the natural pure tennis elegance second only to Federer, Monfils with the astonishing elasticity and shotmaking.
And yet there was never any question, once their careers got going, that either of them would win a Grand Slam. Not a chance. Both reached so many 3rd and 4th rounds, occasional QFs, even the odd semi, but they were never in with a real shot against their brutal contemporaries Federer (b.1981, Nadal (b.1986), Djokovic and Murray (b.1987).
How dispiriting that must have been, and yet how (apart from Gasquet's hilarious cocaine story https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2009/dec/17/richard-gasquet-cocaine-cas-ban) they have just kept on their dignified, elegant way, winning 60+% of their matches, entertaining royally, losing against the best.
Yes, for the money (around $20 million each in prize money), yes for the occasional minor title, but for the hope, I guess, and for the joy in the game too.
Why not just do something really well for a long time, even if the greatest prizes will inevitably evade you? How will Gasquet and Monfils look back? What can they really regret?
As this great era of men's tennis closes, it may turn out that some of us will miss the links of Gasquet and Monfils more than the likes of Djokovic and Nadal.
