Earlier this week I was asked to name some potentially entertaining first-round matchups in Madrid. My sole pick on the ATP side was Corentin Moutet vs. Jerry Shang. I turned out to be completely correct. But at what cost?

We must preserve the memory of this match for future generations. On the one hand was Corentin Moutet, the slight Frenchman with soft hands, loads of trick shots, and a catastrophic temperament. Think of Nick Kyrgios, only divide the height by half and add a better sense of humor. (Just look how cleanly he punctures a Stefanos Tsitsipas fake-deep musing.) There’s something admirable about Moutet’s talent and resourcefulness. Just as he was on the doorstep of the top 50, he had a serious injury on his right wrist, so he taught himself how to hit a one-handed backhand for a season. Life’s not easy as a small-statured lefty suddenly bereft of a backhand; playing righties means a lot of crosscourt battles against heavy forehands. He somehow made it work. Now he slices a ton, runs around every backhand he can, and mixes in the occasional two-hander.

On the other side of the net from Moutet was fellow lefty Jerry Shang, a touted 19-year-old on the cusp of breaking into the top 100. Shang, who might be the most talented men’s prospect to ever play under the Chinese flag, was previously coached by former world No. 1 and noted screwball Marcelo Rios, so he must know a thing or two about excessively large personalities. “I told my team that the only player I didn’t want to play was Corentin,” Shang said afterward. “I don’t want to see him in the first round of the draw. When I got him I just told myself: ‘Win or lose I would have fun and enjoy every point.”‘ That’s one way to describe the relentless distraction games that Moutet specializes in.

No match is ever straightforward for Moutet, who needed nine set points to claim the first set. When he did finish the job, he treated the crowd to the “big balls” celebration, which is rare in the prim domain of tennis but good for a five-figure fine in the NBA. Early in the second set, as Moutet ran to the net to hit an easy put-away, Shang squatted deep and stuck his racquet straight up in desperate self-defense, only for Moutet to somehow put his ball directly into the strings of the outstretched racquet. The ball boinked back into play and Moutet lost the point. That lapse mattered, because later that game, Shang broke Moutet’s serve with a slick passing shot. As an enraged Moutet cocked his racquet back overhead, a poor ball boy nearby recoiled in fear, which says something about that boy’s read on what Moutet might do at any given moment.

The match ran late. In the second set, Moutet asked the umpire for coffee and was outraged to find that this was not a perk provided by the tournament. Always quick to find an angle for martyrdom, he wondered if it was because he wasn’t important enough. “Is it because I’m on Court 4?” he asked. “It doesn’t matter where we play,” said the umpire. “We don’t provide coffee.” A helpful fan eventually reached onto the court to hand over a paper cup of joe, which Moutet accepted.

He also had an underarm serve, and a lengthy demand that a particular fan be ejected, though those barely earn a place in the historical record of this match. Save room for stuff like this: Down 0–3 in the third set, in the middle of a rally, Moutet was doused with water. A groundskeeper hosing down a neighboring court had accidentally sprayed him through the fence. Moutet flipped out, and the umpire ruled it a let. Shang, who’d hit a clean winner only to have it negated, asks if that’s in the rules. Spontaneous dousing is probably not mentioned by name in the rule book, though a let does seem fair.

At 5–5 in the deciding set tiebreak, Moutet served; the racquet flew out of his hand and past the doubles alley, so when Shang’s return came back, Moutet simply attempted to kick it back. That loss of grip put him match point down. It took Shang a little longer still, as he only cashed in on his fifth match point, putting this match mercifully to rest with a forehand winner. Amid the madness there were some genuinely spectacular rallies between two great movers conditioned enough to battle for three hours and 59 minutes. That’s just four minutes short of the semifinal Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal played at this tournament in 2009, which was the longest best-of-three match in ATP tour history and one of the highest-quality clay-court matches ever played. This was…not that. But it was legendary in its own right.

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