Tennis : Mary Pierce at the top

Tennis: Mary Pierce at the top

On Saturday, June 10, 2000, Mary Pierce, at the age of twenty-five, became the 2000 Roland Garros champion, thirty-three years after Françoise Dürr, the last Frenchwoman to be victorious at the Porte d’Auteuil, in Paris. One by one the American Monica Seles, the Swiss Martina Hingis, world number one, and the Spaniard Conchita Martinez, were subjected to the powerful and masterly play of a Mary Pierce at her technical peak, displaying a serenity and confidence that until now she had always lacked.

But this title represents much more than a simple victory for Mary - her second - in a Grand Slam* tournament. It is above all the successful culmination of hard work, begun, when she was very young, with her father, reputedly irascible and authoritarian, but which was to enable her to reach a high standard of tennis and to become the top player in French women’s tennis.

Born in Canada to an American father and a French mother, Mary Pierce learned to play tennis at the age of ten with her father, who trained her relentlessly for eight hours a day under the Florida sun. At fourteen, she turned professional, but a year later broke with the American Tennis Federation, leading to her moving across the Atlantic and her final choice of France, in 1990, as her professional and emotional homeland. At the age of twenty, she won her first Grand Slam title at the Australian Internationals, but then went through a period of doubt marked by the break-up with her father, poor results, a succession of coaches and especially of injuries.

Confirming her return to the highest level, this victory at the French Internationals is thus a riposte to her detractors who were saying that she had been outstripped by the new women players. Competition that Mary Pierce was to overcome by hard work and determination to present France with an historic success, since her singles victory has been followed by one in the doubles, with her partner, Martina Hingis.

Philippe Lampis

* The Grand Slam is a group of four professional tennis tournaments which are the Australian Open in Melbourne, Roland Garros tournament in Paris, Wimbledon in London and the US Open in New York.

On the Internet:
www.rolandgarros.org/en/bios/ws/wtap142.html
(biography and overview of Mary Pierce’s results.)