The 2023 season for French tennis players will not go down in history but will have had the merit of ending well. By winning the two ATP 250 tournaments of the week, the French Ugo Humbert and Adrian Mannarino came, Saturday, November 11, to put an end to a gloomy year for French tennis which is still struggling to turn the page on the four musketeers (Richard Gasquet, Gaël Monfils, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Gilles Simon – the latter two are removed from the courts).
Before these two late titles, five tournaments had been gleaned during the year by French people – all in the 250 category, the least prestigious in the ATP Tour hierarchy. Richard Gasquet (Auckland), Arthur Fils (Lyon) and Gaël Monfils (Stockholm) each won a title in 2023 when Adrian Mannarino had already won two before his coronation in Bulgaria (Newport and Astana). One last good surprise could even come from the young Luca Van Assche (69th) and Arthur Fils (36th), summoned for the Masters Next Gen, from November 28 to December 2 – a tournament which brings together at the end of the season the eight best players under 22 years old.
This season will in any case remain the best for the two winners of the day. Thanks to his victory against the Russian Alexander Shevchenko (63rd in the ATP ranking before the meeting), Ugo Humbert ends the year French “number one”, at twentieth world rank, the best ranking of his career. An accomplishment for someone who had experienced a slump in 2022 and had even fallen beyond 140th place. After his semi-final against Fabio Fognini, the Lorraine confided that being the first Frenchman “was close to his heart”, and that he had even “immediately asked when leaving the court what “Manna” had done” to find out if this place was finally promised to him.
But at the same time, Mannarino, 35, had qualified for the final in Sofia and thus forced his compatriot to work hard until the final. In front of his audience, the native of Metz never failed in his mission and was very calm for his fourth final on the ATP circuit. Serious about his commitment and aggressive in returning serves, Ugo Humbert achieved his “dream”: winning in front of his family and finishing the year in the “top 20”. Staring into space, perhaps thinking of the complicated times he had gone through, the 25-year-old could not hold back his tears when the audience sang a Marseillaise in his honor.
“I’m not in competition with Ugo.”
A few hours earlier, 1,500 kilometers away, Adrian Mannarino celebrated the third title of his season in a much less festive atmosphere. As usual, the Ile-de-France resident was not very expressive when receiving his trophy in a Bulgarian room that was much less crowded than in Lorraine.
However, facing a left-hander like him, this match against Jack Draper (82nd) ??promised to be the perfect trap. But “Manna”, despite a gap in the second set, managed to get the better of his opponent in the baseline game. These two hours of battle and this victory allow him to occupy 22nd place in the world, his best ranking, as in March 2018.
But with the victory of Ugo Humbert, Adrian Mannarino will not spend the end of year holidays as French “number one”. Which doesn’t seem to bother him. “I’m not in competition with Ugo. For me, only the ATP ranking matters. So, being French number 1 or number 2 doesn’t make me either hot or cold,” he told L’Equipe before the final.
The left-hander prefers to remember from these two performances that they allow “French tennis to return to an honorable ranking” after “a moment when the French number one was often around 50th place”. We can bet that these two performances will inspire French tennis players in 2024 – they are 13 in the top 100 – and take them to the round of 16 of a Grand Slam, a stage of the competition that no Habs have managed to reach this year.