Now I don’t HATE Julien Benneteau (as Justin Gimelstob would say, “hate’s a strong word”), but I mentioned in one of my previous posts that I don’t like him very much. Commenter R.C. French asked me to clarify, so here goes:

Tsonga has his supersonic game, fine looks and charismatic personality (and I love his dad, too!)
Monfils has his speed and general funkiness
Gasquet has his ridiculous wealth of talent, including my favorite backhand in the game
P-H Mathieu is courageous in defeat (click here)
Santoro I don’t think I need to explain
Llodra has his joie de vivre and a whole lot more (click here)
Clement plays doubles with Llodra so he can’t be all bad
Nicolas Mahut is a mad S&Ver
Gilles Simon is playing his way into my consciousness, and he looks like Joachim Phoenix from “Walk the Line” (click here).
Amelie has her one-handed backhand, intelligence, two Grand Slam titles and a hint of poetic melancholy
Alize Cornet has her spunk, pluck and a bright future ahead of her
Nathalie Dechy has great volleys and lots of class (if only she could’ve beat Ivanovic at Wimbledon!)
Tatiana Golovin can really play when her body’s working – I enjoyed watching her at last year’s Amelia Island, for example. And she rocks her Lacoste wardrobe
Marion Bartoli is a real tennis eccentric, a Fedophile (click here) and she looked like she really enjoyed meeting those hospitalized kids at Stanford last week (click here)

And Julien Benneteau has – uh, help me, I’m drawing a blank here! He, like his countrywoman Camille Pin, just does nothing for me. I’m open to input, especially if he’s out rescuing pound puppies or painting murals with underprivileged kids in les banlieues every weekend. But until he or one of his defenders can prove me wrong I’m sticking with my original feeling: I don’t like Julien Benneteau, tennis player.

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