Travel Stories
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Monte Carlo to Sanremo
Tennis, the sea and the case for time away.
Some trips are planned around work. This one was planned around tennis.
Every April the Monte-Carlo Masters is played on red clay cut into the hillside above the Mediterranean. I went to watch, and to slow down.
There is a particular pleasure in watching a game you love played at its best. The rhythm of a rally. The hush before a serve. Clay swept smooth, then marked again.
A good club is about more than its courts. It is the terraces, the rituals, the conversations between matches. A place made for lingering.
The casino, from its terraces
Belle Époque, in full flourish
The new quarter at the water’s edge
Raised above the promenade
Away from the courts, Monaco is a study in contrasts: the Belle Époque flourish of the casino and its gardens, and the white lines of the new quarter at the water’s edge. Old and new, side by side.
Then along the coast to Sanremo. A grand old hotel with a marble stair, painted ceilings and a terrace of palms.
And a quiet club, where the courts were red, the morning was still and there was nowhere else to be.
The pool, Sanremo
The terrace at dusk
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Time away is part of the work.
Red clay, Sanremo
Between sets
Photography
Kim Lambert
We spend so much of our lives being busy. It is the time given to what we love that sharpens the eye: for proportion, for rhythm, for the pleasure of a thing done well.
The Riviera, between sets.
