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ROLAND GARROS DIARY
Novak The Linguist; Roger The Tourist
Paris, France


Rain was the protagonist on Thursday in Paris.

ATPWorldTour.com takes a look at the news and talking points at Roland Garros on the first (very rainy) Thursday.

Multilingual Novak
Novak Djokovic isn’t only the best tennis player in the world. On Thursday, the intelligent Serb also revealed he is proficient in six or seven languages, and is keen to learn more.

“We have a saying in our country: The more languages you know, more is your worth as a person,” said Djokovic. “Back in elementary school, we had two languages that we were obliged to learn. English was the first one, and then we could choose the second one. I chose German because I went to practise in Germany after that and spent some time there.

“I like to understand what people are saying wherever I am, at least to pick up a few phrases of those languages. I was always interested in linguistics, so I would love to keep on learning and kind of developing my knowledge in those areas, those languages.

“Obviously English. Italian is very nice language. French. Those are kind of melodic languages. They are nice to listen and also nice to speak. There are some difficult languages to learn, like Chinese or Japanese. I think they are very interesting for me, because there are so many letters in the Chinese alphabet, there is like 3,000 or something, and my knowledge right now is around two or three. I'm going to get to 3,000 eventually!”

Photo Of The Day
Rain may have wreaked havoc on the schedule at Roland Garros on Thursday, but Roger Federer did not let the weather dampen his spirits whilst sightseeing around Paris. The Swiss tweeted: “I really enjoyed going on top of the Eiffel Tower for the first time in my life today.”



You Got A Friend In Me
After his late-finishing win over Lukasz Kubot, France’s Benoit Paire was quizzed about his friendship with Switzerland’s Stanislas Wawrinka, who was unable to finish his match due to rain on Thursday. The pair teamed up for victory at the Aircel Chennai Open in January (d. Begemann/Emmrich) and Paire has high hopes that his Top 10 friend can go far at Roland Garros.

“I'll learn more from him than he learns from me because he's a Top 10 player. He's an example for me. But if he can be inspired by a number of things I do, I'll be very pleased and happy. That friendship started on the tour, and now we are friends even outside of the courts. We are in contact every day. We get news from each other every day.

“He is extremely nice. He's very honest, and I like that kind of person. We have the same interests in life, and we really have a good time together. So I really hope he's going to win and go far in this tournament.”

Rain, Rain Go Away
Roland Garros was plagued by heavy, thundery showers on Thursday, with play on and off and many matches left unfinished or cancelled. The few players that made it to press were asked how they spend their time during mid-match rain delays.

“I was resting mostly,” said Djokovic. “Trying to stretch and do some exercises to keep my body warm as much as I could. And eat. And like every human being does, sit, eat, go to the toilet, come back, wait for the time to go on the court.”

"Obviously it's never easy, never easy," said Grigor Dimitrov. "Coming on and off the court three times is never much fun. I mean, what can you do? You just follow the things that you have done, the practice before and everything. You try to come back to the court the same way I left it. So it's a fine line. You have to find the right tune-up."

Lucas Pouille added, "You go to the locker rooms, you have a shower because it's not that hot out there. You don't want to catch a cold. You want to be ready, and usually you know when it's going to resume more or less. It rained twice, but it wasn't that long we had to wait. When we knew we were about to play again, then we would start with the warm-up."

I’m Sexy And I Know It
Once the serious tennis questions had been asked in his post-match press conference, Grigor Dimitrov was left fielding queries submitted by fans, namely: “How do you think you would rank in a contest of sexiest tennis player on tour?”

After some initial squirming and deflecting, the 22-year-old Bulgarian cheekily responded, “Why are you asking me? How can I put myself out of the Top 3 then? Tell me,” he laughed.