“I thought it would be insurmountable”: Paris says a last goodbye to UTS legend Gael Monfils

“I thought it would be insurmountable to come and say goodbye to you, looking you in the eyes,” Gael Monfils told the Paris crowd on Tuesday night, speaking in French during the farewell ceremony held in his honour at the Rolex Paris Masters.

Two months after playing the last Grand Slam match of his career in New York, La Monf’ is now officially retired. He went all the way to his goal of playing until 40, and did not hide that the final stretch had been hard. “I went through a more complicated period personally,” he said, thanking tournament director Cédric Pioline and French Tennis Federation president Gilles Moretton for helping him overcome “all my fears, all my worries”.

“I gave everything,” he added. “I’m really happy, really at peace with everything I was able to do.”

For UTS, Monfils was more than a guest. He gave the league two complete seasons, in 2023 and 2024, finishing fourth in the year-end rankings in 2023 and fifth in 2024. His only UTS title came at Forest Hills in New York in 2024, in a format that might have been built for him.

The moment that will outlast the results came at Bastide UTS Nîmes in 2025, when he stood in the middle of the court alongside Ugo Humbert and sang the national anthem.

“Twenty-two years of an extraordinary story that I could never have really dreamed of,” he told Paris on Tuesday. We were lucky to share part of it. Thank you, Gael.

He dedicated his last lap of honour to his daughter Skai, 4, who had told him she wanted to be “a champion of everything”, then “a champion of talking”. “Well, that’s a concept,” he replied, before wishing that one day she would play in Paris too.

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Richard Gasquet and Gilles Simon joined him on court: the four New Musketeers together, the night the last of them said goodbye. Benoît Paire and singer M. Pokora were also there, under a giant “Merci Gaël” tifo.

Merci Gaël.