Moise Kouame: Parisian Prodigy

A day after Gael Monfils played his last match at Roland-Garros, the crowd on Court Simonne-Ma­thieu found a new Frenchman to love— Moise Kouame.

Kouame is 17, ranked 318th in the world, and was handed a wildcard by the organisers. He beat former US Open champion Marin Cilic 7-6(4), 6-2, 6-1 to become the youngest man to win a Grand Slam main-draw match in 17 years. Cilic is 37, a former world number three. The scoreline made none of that relevant. “I didn’t care about his age,” Kouame said. “I just wanted to give him shots that were as complicated to play as possible.”

Born in Sarcelles, a suburb north of Paris, Kouame picked up a racquet at five and eventually trained at the Justine Henin Academy in Belgium. Richard Gasquet, who retired at last year’s French Open, has since taken him under his wing. Gasquet knows the territory: he was himself a teenage sensation at Monte Carlo two decades ago, and has been careful to let Kouame be his own story.

The records have come quickly this year. In Miami in March, he became the youngest Masters 1000 match-winner since Nadal in 2003. At Roland-Garros, he is now the youngest man past the first round since Romania’s Dinu Pescariu in 1991.

He faces Paraguay’s Adolfo Daniel Vallejo next. For Kouame, it is one win in the first round. But for one afternoon on Court Simonne-Mathieu, nobody was keeping score of that. The crowd was too busy watching a 17-year-old live out his dream.