French Open hero was in tears after using unconventional tactic to ‘kill’ rival

Gael Monfils has opened up on the tactic he used to defeat Sebastian Baez for his first match win in nine months. The Frenchman became the story of the tournament so far when he battled back from a 0-4 0-40 deficit in the final set to advance to the second round while cramping. He has since admitted to throwing the fourth set away to give himself a chance of winning.

Monfils lit up Court Philippe-Chatrier on Tuesday night as he battled back from the brink to defeat Baez in a thrilling five-set clash in front of his come crowd. The 36-year-old was in tears as he came through 3-6 6-3 7-5 1-6 7-5 in three hours and 47 minutes.

But it was almost a very different story as the Frenchman lost seven games in a row from 1-3 in the fourth and faced a triple break point at 0-4 in the final set. While struggling physically, the former world No 6 miraculously battled back to win and later revealed that he subconsciously tanked the fourth set to give himself the energy to fight in the fifth.

“I loved it. I didn’t expect this at all, at all. Didn’t even expect I could come back, make the right tactical choices,” Monfils said after the match. He went on to explain that he made an unconventional decision to lose a set instead of trying to win in four, sharing what he told himself and his coach.

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“Here again, what I did was very gutsy, from my guts. That’s why I dropped the fourth set. I was dead. Lots of people would say, Why didn’t you do something?” he explained. “I couldn’t do anything. I told Mikael, I said, ‘No, I need 10 minutes.’ Well, 25 minutes I needed. Okay.”

“But you see, it’s crazy. Because that’s something you do but not consciously. You might say it was silly, but you do it consciously, because you’re quite calm and serene, which is not my case at all, but I managed to do it. And that’s crazy at Roland Garros, mentally.”

Monfils also opened up on how he convinced himself that he could still defeat the world No 42. He continued: “I talked to myself, and I said, ‘Don’t you worry, I’ll recover, and I’ll beat him and kill him during the fifth one.’ Think about this, I’m totally crazy. Yeah, I’m telling you the truth, that’s what I was saying to myself.

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“And you know, because if I do the contrary, that’s weird. But I’m quite open with myself. If I lose 6-4 on the fourth one, I’ll be beaten 6-1 in the fifth set. If it doesn’t work for any reasons, I’m dead. Oh, well, you know, openly, I would have started the fifth set at 5-0, I would have been happy, but this is a choice I made, which paid off.”

Monfils’ victory was even more significant given his recent injury woes, with his ranking dropping to No 394 in the world. He hadn’t won a match at tour level since last August, when he made a return from injury at the Montreal Masters and hurt himself again.

And the 36-year-old had some extra motivation behind his refusal to get bagelled when he was staring down the barrel of defeat in the fifth set “Well, three things. I thought, oh, no, I don’t want to have Love-6. Only [Andy] Murray did this to me. I thought, oh, hell, no. And Robredo as well I think,” he said.

“I thought, no, no, I want to at least win a game. And then unconsciously, I thought, if I manage to push things, there’s a world with the wind with me, on the other side, that is, of the court. And who knows? Who knows?

“Then with mixed feeling, I was very happy to have won a game. I thought, oh, good, it’s not going to be Love-6, and two very good forehand shots. I thought there’s a world there, we’re going to do something.”

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