I’m really glad that I watched the match because there was a lot of good all-court cat-and-mouse slice-dice-drop-and-lob stuff. It had a real club-level grudge-match vibe about it that was great.
It goes on the whole match really and was quite strange. I doubt the YouTube video captures all of it, with plenty happening on the changes of ends too. The more I think about it, the more I think it’s a case of each seeing a lot of themselves in the player on the other side of the net and really not liking what they saw. They’re ranting and raving at themselves, but throwing in the odd piece of commentary about the opponent, pretty much the whole way through. A lot of the time the other player is watching and listening and can’t tell who they’re talking about, assuming it must be them etc.
Moutet drop serves him to go up 4-1 in the deciding set before Evo comes back. Evo probably has 3 or 4 huge sprays at all of them: Moutet, then the French-speaking players watching like Paire, Goffin, Gasquet, PHH etc etc - “see if any of you are still here in a few days ... just like the rest of them, no bollocks”. Evo had one point late in the match where he thought a pass from Moutet was going wide and was just starting to do a huge fistpump in front of the French spectactors before it lands flush on the line. He has to pack up the celebration tout suite and Moutet kinda wraps it up from there and they have a bit of an exchange at the net about respect and Evo is still ranting about the bollocks stuff afterwards.
