Sponsor of the “BNP Paribas Jeunes Talents Team”, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga confided in his very first years on the courts: the discovery of tennis, his learning, his idols, his joys but also his disappointments as a teenager. Interview to read in full here.
What memories do you keep of your first big disappointment as a child?
Ah, my first big disappointment (laughs)! It was a defeat in a departmental championship. I must have been ten years old I think. I was upgraded with players older than me and I won all the time in my department and then there was this defeat. I was sad, I cried in disappointment and I even felt ashamed. There was nothing to be ashamed of because the important thing is always to give the maximum. But it worked well for me and I was not used to that. Well, today I am because I lose almost every week (laughs). This is the logic of tennis: in my career, there may have been 95% of the weeks I lost a match.
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