Hailing from a country renowned for its flair, Wimbledon Qualifying top seed Corentin Moutet is the latest French talent to join the top 100, showcasing a stylish lefty game that wowed spectators at Roehampton on Monday.
From backhand smashes to slick volleys and everything in between, Moutet started his Qualifying campaign with a hard-fought 6-4, 3-6, 8-6 win over Austria’s Lucas Miedler to set up a second round match against American Tim Smyczek.
The 20-year-old is a creative character both on and off the court. On social media, he posts videos of himself playing the piano, shares passages of poems that he has written, and quotes some of his favourite French poets such as Rimbaud, Verlaine and Baudelaire.
For the moment though, he prefers to be known for his creativity on the court rather than his intellectual interests off it.
“I don’t really want to speak about this because I’m a tennis player, I’m not someone else,” Moutet told wimbledon.com after his win on Monday.
“I don’t want to be recognised for that because my job is to be a tennis player. It’s just my hobby.”
Moutet has virtually no experience on grass as a professional tennis player – he did reach the semi-finals as a junior at Wimbledon in 2017 – but he certainly has a game that can make him a real threat on the surface.
He comes into this event at a career-high ranking of 85 thanks to an impressive third round showing at his home Grand Slam in Paris last month, which he followed up with a title triumph at a Challenger in Lyon the very next week.
It was Moutet’s second Challenger title of the year. His first came in Chennai in February, when he was still 19, making him the first teenager to win a Challenger trophy in three consecutive seasons since Evgeny Korolev's run from 2005 to 2007.
His exploits in Paris, which saw him upset No.23 ranked clay specialist Guido Pella on the red dirt of Roland-Garros, were understandably met with huge fanfare but Moutet remains focused on just improving his game and keeping up the momentum.
“You always have more fans when you play good, it’s always like this,” he says with a laugh.
“I tried not to focus on those things and just focus on my work, on what I need to do every day. It’s not that important, the messages and all that stuff. But it’s true, I had a lot of messages, a lot of calls.
“It was only the third round [in Paris], so I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like had I won the tournament. It’s just the third round. I need to be better if I want to have a great career and do better than the third round at a Grand Slam.”
As the top seed in the Qualifying draw, Moutet was the favourite against Miedler, but the Austrian didn't make things easy for him on Monday. Trailing by a set and break, Miedler took a bad tumble in the damp conditions. After a medical timeout, however, he turned things around and took the second set, and then went up a break in the decider. The momentum swung back again as Moutet broke twice, but the Frenchman got pegged back while serving for the match. He finally sealed the deal in two hours and nine minutes.
Despite his lack of experience on grass, Moutet feels it’s only a matter of time before he starts doing well on the surface.
“It’s a different surface for all the players I think, so I just try to play my game and try to make some adjustments to my game a little bit. There are many good players here, even on grass, so it’ll be tough,” he explains. “I just need to learn how to move on grass, because it’s not the same feeling and it’s not that easy, so I need to play more matches on grass and then I think it’ll be better and better every day.”
