Friend Jeremy Chardy is no longer around depending on which battles.
He is 36 years old, his beard is turning white, his wife and daughter have traveled a few kilometers from London where they live to see him, and his body no longer pulls like it used to. Today, Chardy is 542nd in the world and is light years away from the number 25 he had achieved in 2013, when French tennis was sighing for him, and also for Gasquet, Monfils, Gilles Simon or Tsonga.
Friend Jeremy Chardy, held back by a damaged knee for years, is no longer up for second battles, and the shortcomings multiply when he faces Carlos Alcaraz, a teenager in his twenties who is as hyper-excited as a cabbage ·legal shortly before the summer holidays.
In less than one nothing, two sets are headed for world number one. And, despite Chardy struggling in the third, the epitaph of the game is a two-way highway.
Chardy's journey ends, an ATP title endorses him (apart from a title at Wimbledon in juniors) and the drift of Alcaraz, the fashionable tennis player, the breath of fresh air that il ·illusion the tennis bureaucrats, now that the Big Three face the autumn.
