“We know that tomorrow we are not going to say, ‘Stop calling us the French Open, call us Roland Garros!’ to two, three, five or eight million British fans who are crazy about tennis and to even more Americans. It doesn’t work like that in this era. The time of marketing dictatorship, of worldwide campaigns is a bit démodé. We have Internet, Facebook. We can’t take people for fools. And if they have decided to call it the French Open, in a sense, we should say, ‘So much the better.”’
--Edouard-Vincent Caloni, communications and marketing director, French Tennis Federation ("A Puzzler in Paris: French Open or Roland Garros?")
Lighting a Gauloise, Caloni continued:
"In the end, what does it matter? We watch--all of us doomed--as th e men, the women, swat the ball back and forth, over the net, into the blood-red clay. . . .The days pass, the world spins. . . . The tournament--French Open, Roland Garros--either way a momentary distraction on the journey to la oblivion. Do we not all merely serve and volley in a futile rally against the impending nothingness? When the celestial linesman calls us for our foot faults, what matters it then if chroniclers write of l'open Francais or Roland-Garros, for ultimately it is only life.
"Oh, and if his knee holds up, Rafa's totally got this in the bag."
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