A TOP SEED’S COMPULSION TO DAZZLE
By Josh Gajewski
LOS ANGELES – Benoit Paire, a young Frenchman with an electric two-handed backhand and a seeming compulsion to dazzle – no matter the cost – disappeared into the night, quickly but not quietly.
The No. 50 player in the world and top seed at the Farmers Classic – the first time the 23-year-old had ever been a top seed as a pro – fell to his tennis opposite in Michael Russell on Thursday night. The score was 7-5, 6-4, and it was one of the most interesting, or oddest, matches you’ll ever see:
Young versus old.
Fire versus control.
Six-foot-five versus five-foot-eight.
Ten total service breaks, with nine of those – yes, nine – coming in the first set.
And a player in Paire who would win by the sword, die by the sword: he ripped 34 winners to Russell’s 11 but also made 39 unforced errors to Russell’s 14. That same kind of all-or-nothing style actually won this tournament last year – and in truth, the long-lean look, the hinged backhand and the penchant for so many drop shots seemed almost carbon copied from defending champion Ernests Gulbis, who didn’t come here to defend his title but may have sent a doppelganger.
Like Gulbis, Paire also frequently chirped away at his box. He also drew a coaching violation when the chirping came back, kicked a microphone, twice went straight to the other end of the court during a changeover rather than sitting and frequently challenged calls that weren’t even close.
And so, on this night, the doppelganger went away, but not without a buzz.
Within minutes of the defeat, Paire was in his car, headed out. But Inside Tennis snagged a brief word with the Frenchman by phone as he drove off.
“It was a tough match because I couldn’t serve,” Paire told IT.
Paire made only 43 percent of his first serves, and he double faulted eight times.
Is a player like Russell, more of a counter-puncher who just gets the ball back so consistently, the kind of opponent that most frustrates such an aggressive player like you?
“No, Russell is a good player, he played good last week, too. For me, I just couldn’t serve. [I didn’t lose] because my game is so bad, my serve was bad.”
But you also made a lot of mistakes on some very aggressive shots. And you said once in an interview that if you just keep the ball in play you get bored, and so playing “beautiful points” is important to you but that it also gets you into trouble. Is that what happened?
“It’s true, I love to play beautiful points, when I feel good. But this is my first match on hard court [since March], it’s tough to make that transition. I just got here three days ago. But I’m talking about my serve only, because that’s what it was. I love to play beautiful points but the objective tonight wasn’t to play beautiful points, the objective tonight was to win. I did not do that.”
Moments after talking to the departed Paire, Russell arrived for his post-match presser. “Very interesting,” he said of the evening. “He’s a very unorthodox player. I kind of knew that going in but I didn’t know it was going to be that awkward.”
Quite frankly, we couldn’t have said it better.
