No more ‘drench open’. The new Roland Garros is on its way
By Christopher Clarey
Though the 2017 French Open does not begin until Sunday, the tournament has already won a marathon match. The proof is visible only after you leave the traditional confines of Roland Garros and pass through the gates of the adjacent botanical gardens, les Serres d’Auteuil, where a towering red, white and blue building crane sits in the midst of a vast, freshly dug pit. After years of litigation and delays, the new and expanded French Open is at last on its way, and this construction site, which will occupy the corner of these elegant municipal gardens, will eventually become one of the most avant-garde tennis stadiums in the sport’s history.
Planned for an opening in 2019, it will be a partly sunken court surrounded by new greenhouses that will give this faltering, overcrowded Grand Slam tournament the breathing room it needs. “It’s our project of the century,” said Bernard Giudicelli, the newly elected president of the French Tennis Federation, which runs the event. The project, long contested by environmentalists and some neighbors of Roland Garros, comes with some collateral damage.
Sentimentalists, ill-served in general by tennis’ latest building spree, are going to lose some more touchstones. The new 5,000-seat “Greenhouse court” will replace the circular Court No. 1, nicknamed the Bull Ring, one of the most atmospheric and acoustically ideal places to watch a match.
“You shouldn’t be nostalgic for No. 1, because the Greenhouse court will offer a whole other spectacle,” Giudicelli said. “I don’t have any doubt it will quickly become a monument.”
Still, it takes time to build tennis memories. The Bull Ring will be demolished to make way for a large lawn that will be Roland Garros’ version of Aorangi Terrace, better known as Henman Hill, at Wimbledon. It will be a grassy place for a big crowd to watch tennis on a big screen and maybe — just maybe — luxuriate in the sunshine. That would not have been an option during last year’s rain-delayed edition of the tournament, aptly called the Drench Open.
With such weather in mind, the federation’s project will also add a retractable roof to the stadium’s centerpiece, the Philippe Chatrier Court, by 2020.
The modifications associated with that work will also require the demolition of Court No. 2, with its overhanging tribunes, architectural quirks, intimacy and vintage feel. Its replacement, the new and larger Court No. 14, will be built on the far western end of the grounds.
The “new Roland Garros” will be very new indeed, with hardly anything left from the original, which was built in a hurry in 1928 to provide a suitably grand venue to defend the Davis Cup that France’s four musketeers — Henri Cochet, René Lacoste, Jean Borotra and Jacques Brugnon — had finally managed to win.
But then at least the tournament is still here in Paris. In 2011, the federation flirted with the idea of moving it out of the city altogether to Versailles or another suburb, before voting to stay put.
There has been cause to question that, with the construction delays and well-founded fear that Roland Garros was losing ground in both prestige and means to the other three Grand Slam tournaments: the Australian Open, Wimbledon and the US Open.
The French Open’s total prize money this year of 36 million euros ($40.4 million) ranks third behind the U.S. Open and Wimbledon. Even with the expansion from 8.6 hectares to 11.16 hectares, Roland Garros will still rank last in surface area and the number of roofed stadiums. “I think we need to play the card of our own identity,” Giudicelli said. “France is not a continent like the United States. We don’t have the facility that will allow us the vast spaces available to the Australian Open.”
Giudicelli said he only began to play tennis at age 21 after falling for the sport when he watched Bjorn Borg beat Victor Pecci in the 1979 men’s French Open final. Giudicelli eventually competed in low-level tournaments, became an instructor and helped create a tennis league in Corsica of which he became president. “There is a bad joke at home that says that Corsicans are lazy, but the day one of them got up and going, he became emperor,” he said, referring to Napoleon.
Though the 2017 French Open does not begin until Sunday, the tournament has already won a marathon match. The proof is visible only after you leave the traditional confines of Roland Garros and pass through the gates of the adjacent botanical gardens, les Serres d’Auteuil, where a towering red, white and blue building crane sits in the midst of a vast, freshly dug pit. After years of litigation and delays, the new and expanded French Open is at last on its way, and this construction site, which will occupy the corner of these elegant municipal gardens, will eventually become one of the most avant-garde tennis stadiums in the sport’s history.
Planned for an opening in 2019, it will be a partly sunken court surrounded by new greenhouses that will give this faltering, overcrowded Grand Slam tournament the breathing room it needs. “It’s our project of the century,” said Bernard Giudicelli, the newly elected president of the French Tennis Federation, which runs the event. The project, long contested by environmentalists and some neighbors of Roland Garros, comes with some collateral damage.
Sentimentalists, ill-served in general by tennis’ latest building spree, are going to lose some more touchstones. The new 5,000-seat “Greenhouse court” will replace the circular Court No. 1, nicknamed the Bull Ring, one of the most atmospheric and acoustically ideal places to watch a match.
“You shouldn’t be nostalgic for No. 1, because the Greenhouse court will offer a whole other spectacle,” Giudicelli said. “I don’t have any doubt it will quickly become a monument.”
Still, it takes time to build tennis memories. The Bull Ring will be demolished to make way for a large lawn that will be Roland Garros’ version of Aorangi Terrace, better known as Henman Hill, at Wimbledon. It will be a grassy place for a big crowd to watch tennis on a big screen and maybe — just maybe — luxuriate in the sunshine. That would not have been an option during last year’s rain-delayed edition of the tournament, aptly called the Drench Open.
With such weather in mind, the federation’s project will also add a retractable roof to the stadium’s centerpiece, the Philippe Chatrier Court, by 2020.
The modifications associated with that work will also require the demolition of Court No. 2, with its overhanging tribunes, architectural quirks, intimacy and vintage feel. Its replacement, the new and larger Court No. 14, will be built on the far western end of the grounds.
The “new Roland Garros” will be very new indeed, with hardly anything left from the original, which was built in a hurry in 1928 to provide a suitably grand venue to defend the Davis Cup that France’s four musketeers — Henri Cochet, René Lacoste, Jean Borotra and Jacques Brugnon — had finally managed to win.
But then at least the tournament is still here in Paris. In 2011, the federation flirted with the idea of moving it out of the city altogether to Versailles or another suburb, before voting to stay put.
There has been cause to question that, with the construction delays and well-founded fear that Roland Garros was losing ground in both prestige and means to the other three Grand Slam tournaments: the Australian Open, Wimbledon and the US Open.
The French Open’s total prize money this year of 36 million euros ($40.4 million) ranks third behind the U.S. Open and Wimbledon. Even with the expansion from 8.6 hectares to 11.16 hectares, Roland Garros will still rank last in surface area and the number of roofed stadiums. “I think we need to play the card of our own identity,” Giudicelli said. “France is not a continent like the United States. We don’t have the facility that will allow us the vast spaces available to the Australian Open.”
Giudicelli said he only began to play tennis at age 21 after falling for the sport when he watched Bjorn Borg beat Victor Pecci in the 1979 men’s French Open final. Giudicelli eventually competed in low-level tournaments, became an instructor and helped create a tennis league in Corsica of which he became president. “There is a bad joke at home that says that Corsicans are lazy, but the day one of them got up and going, he became emperor,” he said, referring to Napoleon.