Simon Criticizes the Media: "They Tell Stories, But We Don’t Talk About Tennis"

Invited by Gaël Monfils on his talk show, Gilles Simon criticized the media, claiming that tennis itself isn’t highlighted enough.

"A football coach will be questioned by a journalist about his tactics—he’ll have to answer. In tennis, we never talk to the coaches.

I’d love for someone to ask Magnus Norman how Stan (Wawrinka) managed to win three Grand Slams, or about Soderling’s progress.

But for that, we’d actually have to talk about tennis. We’re in a sport where we talk about other things. We talk about energy, mindset, things we don’t even understand.

Madison Keys won (the Australian Open), everyone’s happy for her, but we’ll never know how she did it. They say the planets were aligned, and we just move on.

When they see you hit a forehand that works, they say, ‘Gaël, if you always hit your forehand like that, you’ll win every Grand Slam.’

But they don’t understand in that moment why you hit it that way and why you can’t do it at other times.

They’ll say you’re not mentally strong enough. We justify losses with mindset, desire, motivation—completely invisible things, so you can say whatever you want.

But often, the reason is purely tennis-related.

When you figure out a game plan against a player, strangely enough, your mindset improves."