In Paris, a mosaic of sport and art

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June 4, 2018 8:48 PM

PARIS — Roland Garros is the smallest of the four Grand Slam tennis venues, packed into a narrow wedge of parkland. Its 17 courts are fixed rectangular slabs, like the bricks that are crushed into dust to cover their surface.

But unlike the grass at Wimbledon and the hardcourts in Melbourne, Australia, and Flushing Meadows, Queens, the dust at Roland Garros moves.

With every gust of wind, bits of the court lift into the air and spread the terre battuebeyond its intended confines, looking like a faint coat of rust.

That pigment mixes with a collection of textures and characters around the grounds to form an ever-moving mosaic of sport and art; of energy and tranquility; of foliage and fortification.

Beneath the surface, hundreds of players buzz, their nervous energy bottled until it is uncorked onto an assigned court. Their equipment is temporary, though the best matches become indelible.

The Roland Garros complex is fanning outward, its courts and people pushing farther into the surrounding green spaces, carving into and coexisting with nature. The new Court 18, which begins an incremental westward expansion, is sunken and arboreal.

An iron perimeter is dotted with security personnel who placidly watch the life teeming around them. Their detachment is astonishing, because to be at Roland Garros is to become attached to it.

While the players wear what is dictated by their apparel sponsors, visitors find numerous forms of self-expression.

Fans dress to match their spirit, representing their allegiances to the sport or their sense of place. Sometimes the two intermingle: One fan had his Mona Lisa T-shirt autographed by Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, a Russian player whose own fluid artistry probably had never before been melded to Leonardo da Vinci’s.

But at Roland Garros, everything blends into one.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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