When Rafael Nadal won his 13th French Open this month, he donned a neon-pink face mask and kissed the trophy, known as La Coupe des Mousquetaires. He then removed his mask and bit the handle.

The trophy is an homage to Jean Borotra, Jacques Brugnon, Henri Cochet and René Lacoste, known as the Four Musketeers, the revered Frenchmen who put their nation on the tennis map in the 1920s and ’30s.

“I can’t overstate the impact the Four Musketeers have had on French tennis,” said Guy Forget, a former top five ATP player in the early 1990s and the tournament director for the French Open. “Everything from the Roland Garros Stadium to the Lacoste polo shirts you see people wear all over the world, is all because of those four men.”

The first film version of the Alexandre Dumas novel “The Three Musketeers,” with Douglas Fairbanks, opened in 1921, shortly before the four young French tennis players began their assault on the world’s major championships. It didn’t take long for them to earn their nickname.

Source: New York Times

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