When tennis enters the suburbs

Yannick Noah’s pledge to fight exclusion with rackets and balls. “It is an association that works in the social sphere, but has a sporting vocation”, says Maxime Foucart, head of communication and events at Fête le mur

He was a boy when a certain Arthur Ashe saw him playing tennis in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon. He realized after a few exchanges that he had some talent and reported him to the French tennis federation. “He was my hero, my idol,” he says today Yannick Noah. But not only because the great American tennis player favored his career: also because when he decided to put an end to his professional life, Arthur Ashe, he did something even more important. “When he stopped, he opened centers in suburban New York and just about everywhere in the suburbs of the United States, so that children could play tennis. I found this thing very nice, and my dream was to be able to develop tennis in the French suburbs as well. It inspired me.”