Vive Monfils!

Sportswriters often use the verb “perform” to describe athletic achievement. Tom Brady performed exactly as you would expect in the Super Bowl. Donovan Mitchell will need to perform well if the Cavaliers play the Celtics. Scottie Scheffler wants to perform his best in the final round at Augusta. “What a performance!” Howards Cosell shouted out when George Brett bashed his third home run off Catfish Hunter in the 1978 American League Championship Series.

I like “perform” a lot as a sports word.

But “perform” has two distinct definitions, I think.

Perform can mean to carry out something, do the work, fulfill an obligation—you perform a task, you perform your duties, and on Tuesday, you will get your performance review.

Perform, though, can also mean to entertain, to delight, to enthrall others. You perform on stage, you perform a song, you perform a dance—‘“May we ask you to enchant us with a performance?”

Gäel Monfils has performed on the tennis court for two decades.

But always, always, always the second way.

There are those who will argue that this has prevented Monfils from becoming one of the greatest tennis players who ever lived. Monfils’ athletic gifts overwhelm you. He’s 6-foot-4, runs like Usain Bolt, skies like Vince Carter, changes direction like Messi, and has the effortless grace of Ken Griffey Jr. If, in the middle of a match, Monfils suddenly took off and started flying around the court like Superman, you would think, “Yeah, that makes sense.” You imagine that you could introduce Gäel Monfils to any sport on earth today and by tomorrow, he’d be one of the best in the world.

That seemed his destiny when he chose tennis. In 2004, at age 17, he nearly became the first player in 20-plus years to win the Junior Grand Slam—he won the Australian Open Juniors, breezed to victory in the French Open Juniors (beating future top 10 player and fellow showman Fabio Fognini 6-1, 6-1 along the way) and lost just one set on his way to the Wimbledon Juniors title, He lost in the third round of the U.S. Open—his first loss all year. The future seemed written.

And yet, he’s never quite been the best in the world. He topped out at No. 6 way back in 2016. I certainly don’t mean to diminish what it means to become the sixth-best anything on planet Earth, or to downplay Monfils’ awe-inspiring career, where he has won 571 matches and earned more than $23 million.

Fair or unfair, though, his breathtaking talents promised more. He has never reached the final of a Grand Slam tournament. He has never won a Masters 1000 Tournament. Monfils has played Novak Djokovic 20 times in his career, including last week in Brisbane. Monfils lost all 20. Rafael Nadal beat him 14 out of 16. Roger Federer played Monfils five times in the Grand Slams and beat him five times. You could argue, of course, that it has been Monfils’ curse (along with so many others) to come of age in the era of FND, but I would argue that there’s something else at play here.

Federer … Nadal … Djokovic … they performed.

And Gäel Monfils? Well, he performed.

That is to say—he performed miracles. He performed symphonies. He performed magic. You want to spend a glorious six minutes this weekend? Watch this:

If you want a few more moments, then watch this:

None of us can know what ticks inside Gäel Monfils or anyone else, but it always seemed like he wanted those moments of wizardry as much or more than he wanted to win the matches and tournaments and grand slams. Nolan Ryan lived to strike out the world. Barry Sanders lived for the breathtaking run. John Daly lived to grip and rip. Dominique Wilkins lived for the dunk that ended all dunks.

And Gäel Monfils, for more than 20 years, has lived to give every person in the crowd a memory that they could hold on to for the rest of their lives. Does that mean he has lost points and games and matches by attempting impossible shots? Yes, more, probably, than any player in tennis history. But announcers have yelled, “Oh, stop it!” after countless Monfils shots.

This week, Monfils prepared for his 19th Australian Open by playing a tournament in Auckland. He had played the Auckland tournament three times in his career and had never come close to winning it. Last year, he blew a lead in his first-round match in three tough sets to a Hungarian named Fabian Marozsan.

Even then, there was this point (go to 2:34):

The bow at the end of that point is perfect Monfils.

Anyway, there seemed no reason to expect too much from Monfils here. He’s still an athletic marvel, but he’s also 38 years and four months old, and nobody—not even Roger Federer—has won a tournament at any ATP Tour level at Monfils’ age. Back in the 1970s, you had some 40-something guys like Ken Rosewall and Pancho Gonzalez who won tournaments, but that was before the ATP Tour, and it was also when guys played serve and volley tennis with wood rackets. It’s just different.

But Monfils played inspired tennis. One thing that’s easy to think about Monfils is that he’s mistake-prone… that’s not exactly right. When he wants to be consistent, he can be as consistent as anyone—here’s a 71-stroke point he had at the Australian Open against human backboard Gilles Simon.

No, it isn’t mistakes that can send him off course… it’s distraction. The game doesn’t always keep his attention. The repetitive nature of tennis—“So much of it is patterns,” the pattern master, Novak Djokovic, explains—does not always appeal to his artistic sensibilities. But in Auckland, he was locked in. Perhaps it’s because he knows the end is near. Perhaps it’s fatherhood—he spoke throughout the tournament about wanting to make his two-year-old daughter, Skai, proud. Perhaps it was just his time; Monfils is one of only four players to make an ATP Tournament final for 19 consecutive years.

And, on Saturday, it happened—he beat the Belgian Zizou Bergs in straight sets, and while there were a handful of Monfils’ super shots, he mostly just outlasted Bergs. He fought off all six break points Bergs had. He returned brilliantly, particularly on Bergs’ second serve. He made 11 fewer unforced errors. And he became the oldest player to win an ATP tournament.

The greatness that was predicted for Monfils will never happen now. He will never be No. 1 in the world. He will never win a Grand Slam event—heck, he will be a pretty massive underdog in the first round of the Australian Open on Monday, when he plays a 21-year-old Frenchman who grew up idolizing him, the 6-foot-8 serving phenomenon Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard.

But Gäel Monfils achieved his own kind of greatness. What a joy he is.