Inspired By Chang, Simon Spends A Career Proving Doubters Wrong

As a kid in Nice, Gilles Simon had great tennis skills but he kept hearing why he wouldn’t make it as a pro.

Too skinny. Too short.

“He plays OK but he’s too small,” Simon remembers people saying.

But when he was about 10 years old, Simon saw a player who helped him believe those doubters were wrong. The player wasn’t particularly big nor particularly strong. He also didn’t try to outhit his opponents, opting instead to out-hustle and outsmart them. The American would chase down every ball and place his serve against his opponent’s weakness.

Michael Chang would go on to win 34 tour-level titles, including Simon’s home Grand Slam championship, Roland Garros, and reach No. 2 in the Emirates ATP Rankings. He also helped Simon believe that he had a future in tennis.

“It helps a lot when you can see a player like him on the court doing so well, playing smartly, being crafty… trying to use his weapons at the maximum level,” Simon told ATPWorldTour.com. “You realise he can do very good things… and it helped me to believe that I could make it also.”

Twenty years later, Simon has more than proved the naysayers wrong. At 6’0”, 154 pounds, he’s hardly the tallest or the biggest ATP World Tour player. Yet few have been as consistent as Simon during the past 15 years.

The right-hander has won 12 ATP World Tour titles and nearly $11 million in prize money. By the end of the season, he could secure his 400^th tour-level match win.

“In tennis, you can play with every type of physique,” he said.

The Frenchman also has won at least one title in eight of the past nine years. He hopes to add another year to that streak this week at the Winston-Salem Open.

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Last year as the No. 1 seed, Simon had match point in the third set but lost to Brit Aljaz Bedene 6-7(5), 7-6(5), 7-6(6) in the second round.

This year, Simon came to Winston-Salem early to try to get more acclimated to the fast and hot conditions. He arrived here last Thursday and has spent more than three hours on court every day sweating and trying to adapt his flat, baseline game to the quick hard courts.

“For me, I hate to miss, and here you are missing. It’s really hard. The balls are flying,” he said. “I realise I’m struggling a bit here, so that’s why I took the chance to come early and to practise hard and I see already a lot improvement.”

At 31, Simon is firmly in the second half of his career. But his workmanlike style won’t end when he decides to retire. He enjoys watching Belgian David Goffin, 5’11”, 150 pounds; and Japanese Kei Nishikori, 5’10”, 165 pounds. They, like Simon, have had to find success differently than most.

“Nishikori, Goffin they are not mountains,” Simon said, “but they are quite good.”

You could say the same for Simon.