Dear Gaël,
As 2026 draws to a close, you are taking your bow. In your own way, as always, surprising us one last time. No farewell tour, no last match at Bercy: your retirement went through quietly, for reasons that are yours alone. And on 3 November, you came to say goodbye to the Paris crowd without a racket.
You never won a Grand Slam, and yet, like a whole generation of French tennis fans, we grew up together. You may not know it, but I was already following you when you were crushing the junior circuit in 2004. The Clément / Grosjean / Santoro generation was starting to fade, and we were promised that France's next Grand Slam winner would come from the new generation, led by Richard Gasquet.
You never won a Grand Slam, and yet your title in Sopot in 2005 meant something special to me. I was living in Warsaw at the time, which probably made me one of the few fans who didn't have to look up this Polish seaside resort.
You never won a Grand Slam, and yet you are one of the few tennis players who kept me up at night and, I admit, sometimes made me wake the neighbours by leaping off the sofa, stunned by yet another slide or yet another between-the-legs shot from another planet. With you, we never knew what would happen next, whether you were two sets down or two sets up.
You never won a Grand Slam, but what would have happened if you had converted one of your two match points against Roger Federer in the 2014 US Open quarter-final? Who can believe you wouldn't have gone on to beat Marin Čilić and then Kei Nishikori? Then again, it would have been so you to beat one of the GOATs and then lose to Čilić in the semis, with all due respect to the Croatian.
You never won a Grand Slam, and yet you gave us unforgettable nights. How could we forget Court Philippe-Chatrier on its feet one night in May 2023, when you pushed past your limits once again to beat Sebastián Báez at 36, in a match your body no longer wanted to play?
How do you explain that an athlete whose career reads like a series of near-misses is so popular? Probably because you never saw tennis as a job. You played with and for your crowd, sometimes to excess, often going for the impossible shot rather than winning the point without flair. In a sport where everyone ended up looking the same, you never looked like anyone else.
And yet the whole new generation of players, whose rise you witnessed thanks to your longevity, cites you as an example, and sometimes even as an idol.
As you take over as France's Davis Cup captain, I wanted, like many others I suspect, to say one last, huge thank you.
You never won a Grand Slam, but you won the people's Grand Slam.