Why did Guy Forget leave the management of Roland-Garros and the Masters 1000 de Bercy? – Liberation

And Guy Forget invoked Yannick Noah. Arrived at the end of the contract, the former French tennis number one leaves his position as director of the Roland-Garros tournaments and the Masters 1000 in Paris. At first, we knew nothing of the motivations of the one who piloted these two major tournaments, among the main ones on the circuit, since 2016 for the Major on clay and since 2012 for the Masters 1000 indoors.

And then the team posted an interview that explains (almost) everything. Where we learn that things were not going well between the former world number four, 56, and Gilles Moretton, the president of the French Tennis Federation (FFT).

“I have always considered human relationships to be essential; I think it was Yannick (Noah) who was the first to instil that in us, which counted a lot in the successes we had in the Davis Cup», says Forget, summoning the memory of the France team which had defeated the United States in 1991, during a fiery final in Lyon. Guy Forget who, in addition to the 2001 salad bowl won with Cédric Pioline, Nicolas Escudé and Sébastien Grosjean, will also lead French tenniswomen to victory in the Fed Cup in 2003.

So human relationships “it must be the driving force, confidence, and if I don’t feel this balance around me, this chemistry, I’m not well”, continues the now ex-director of Roland-Garros, which he piloted for six years. “From the beginning of Gilles’ mandate [en février, ndlr], I felt that the communication was not going through […] Communication never existed with him. And clearly, I felt that there was no trust,” strikes Forget. The FFT immediately announced that “his succession for the Parisian Grand Slam (would be) announced in the coming days”.

A “love story with Roland-Garros”

If the former captain of the French tennis team – for 14 years, a record – says to himself “sad” of this page that turns, he assures that he leaves on his own and that Gilles Moretton made him an offer, which he refused. “My buddy just got kicked out of the tennis family…”yet exclaimed Yannick Noah, his friend and former captain, on his Instagram account, apparently unaware of the bickering and surprised at this announcement.

The last French winner of Roland-Garros at men’s “has a lot of aura, we’re tall, he has a fairly strong ability to persuade, but I didn’t want to keep him informed of what was going on and what I was going through, continue Forget in the team. He’s like me, we were residents at Roland-Garros, it’s a love story we have with this stadium, a second home. He and I are perhaps the ones who have spent the most time in this house, for thirty, forty years. We have a very emotional relationship, perhaps too much, with this institution…”

The name of Guy Forget had been cited in early October in the Pandora papers, an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), according to which he would have benefited from opaque tax arrangements in the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands. The FFT’s ethics committee had taken up this affair on its own and had cleared Forget, on November 5, “in the absence of tax evasion or other criminally reprehensible behavior established“. This case has no “not at all” played in the announcement of his resignation, he assured Tuesday.