Roland Garros' last hope for a Frenchman winning the French Open bowed out during Wednesday's quarterfinals. But it was the manner in which Gael Monfils finished his wild, five-set loss to Andy Murray that drew criticism. Not from pro-Monfils crowd, but from former rival Andy Roddick.
Death of U.S. tennis on the horizon?
According to Tennis.com, Roddick was less than impressed by Monfils' performance during his quarterfinals match against Murray. Or make that, less than impressed by certain sets of his performance.
After extreme momentum swings, Murray took the fifth set over Monfils at love.
"Well, the way that he played the last three or four games, yeah, for me it was unexpected," Murray said, according to another Tennis.com report. "His level in the third and fourth sets was extremely high. He made very few mistakes. But that's the thing about five-set matches, is you need to do it for longer than two sets. You need to do it for a longer period than that. Obviously once I got up in the fifth set his level dropped a lot. But, I mean, he did play some really good stuff."
As Murray raced out to a two-set lead at 6-4, 6-1, Roddick left Monfils for dead on Twitter, even getting support from Brad Gilbert.
Nothing pisses me off more when watching someone giving a horrible effort. Showboats when winning and rolls over when down #hatethat
— andyroddick (@andyroddick) June 4, 2014
@andyroddick frustrating to call the match as we'll expected a lot more of La Monf in front of this awesome crowd — Brad Gilbert (@bgtennisnation) June 4, 2014
@bgtennisnation begs the question on if you still have some copies of "Winning Ugly" around ......
— andyroddick (@andyroddick) June 4, 2014
Roddick's comments, however, drew the ire of several tennis fans. But instead of overreacting to them, Roddick diffused the possible Twitter war with those monitoring his tweets.
@JayMcMahon guy is insanely gifted ... No doubt about it. I agree that he should have had a better career than me ..... He hasn't ... — andyroddick (@andyroddick) June 4, 2014
@ShirleyMoulton @JayMcMahon to be fair Im at least a second rate player:) We played the bulk of our careers in the exact same generation
— andyroddick (@andyroddick) June 4, 2014
Then, Monfils staged an epic comeback, winning the next two sets, also 6-4, 6-1 and surprised his tweeting critic.
Props to Monfils for turning this around ..... I 100 percent thought he was gonna tap out for good after tanking second. Much better effort — andyroddick (@andyroddick) June 4, 2014
At least momentarily.
Disregard last tweet
— andyroddick (@andyroddick) June 4, 2014
Even Monfils was stumped.
"Well, I don't think I have the answer yet," a pensive Monfils said afterward, according to Tennis.com. "I think I played a good first game. I think it was 15-30 (on Murray's serve). Then everything happened very fast. I missed a few shots, and I don't know. I don't really know what happened. It was very fast. You know, very fast. I start to miss a lot of balls. I felt not bad, so it was a very strange feeling. Very strange."
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