{"id":295162,"date":"2025-11-19T16:15:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T16:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/295162\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T16:15:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T16:15:09","slug":"genius-or-clownish-tennis-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/295162\/","title":{"rendered":"Genius or Clownish \u2013 Tennis Now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Richard Pagliaro | Wednesday, November 19, 2025<br \/>Photo credit: Julian Finney\/Getty<\/p>\n<p>Corentin Moutet has flirted with the fine line between genius and madness.<\/p>\n<p>After an epic mind-numbing tweener miss that proved costly in Davis Cup, Moutet conceded his shot selection \u201clooks quite stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennisexpress.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" data-lazyloaded=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"610\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Pro-Player-Gear2.jpg\" alt=\"tennis express pro player gear\" class=\"wp-image-54540\"  data-\/><\/a>tennis express pro player gear<\/p>\n<p>In case you missed it, Moutet was serving at 5-6, 15-all against Belgium\u2019s Raphael Collignon when he had an easy short volley a few feet from net.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of hitting the conventional shot, Moutet badly bungled a forward tweener attempt, after his opponent had already given up on the point.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Corentin Moutet attempted this completely unnecessary trick shot while up 6-2 5-6, 15-15 on Raphael Collignon of Belgium, leading to France, not just himself, losing the set and the match, and now being at risk of elimination in the Davis Cup Finals.<\/p>\n<p>No words. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/pnwyTgShKq\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/pnwyTgShKq<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Bastien Fachan (@BastienFachan) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BastienFachan\/status\/1990840831436095922?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">November 18, 2025<\/a>  <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat can I say? I made it many times. People said I\u2019m a genius when I made it. Now they\u2019re probably going to say that I\u2019m a clown,\u201d Moutet said afterward. \u201cThat\u2019s how I feel right now.<br \/>I think that the stress, the tension of the match, the emotion, that\u2019s how I expressed it. I was tight on this<br \/>game. So I think that\u2019s why I did it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That horrific miss cost Moutet dearly.<\/p>\n<p>A fired-up Collignon came back from a set down to defeat Moutet 2-6, 7-5, 7-5 in a thrilling opening match. Zizou Bergs followed with the 6-3, 7-6(4) victory over Arthur Rinderknech giving Belgium an insurmountable 2-0 lead in the best-of-three-match quarterfinal to send Team Belgium into its first Davis Cup semifinal since 2017.<\/p>\n<p>A magical shotmaker at his best, Moutet said he regrets that tweener attempt.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s hard to do the good choice, even if for the people it looks quite stupid to do this shot. Even for myself. I don\u2019t know what to say,\u201d Moutet said. \u201cIt was an important point. Will be much smarter to finish<br \/>with a volley. I said I cannot play again this shot. If I would have to play it again, I would do different, for sure.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah, I mean, in the same time it\u2019s easy to criticize when it doesn\u2019t go well, and say that it\u2019s a great shot when I make it. So I\u2019m trying not to be too hard on myself. In the same time, I try to be honest with myself, as well. I could do much better choices on this shot.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Richard Pagliaro | Wednesday, November 19, 2025Photo credit: Julian Finney\/Getty Corentin Moutet has flirted with the fine&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-295162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}