You have to look down to find them. There, at waist level with most of the players, are the two youngest ‘journalists’ in tennis, Matías and Camila González, children of the successful Mexican doubles player Santiago González.
‘Matias is 11 years old and Camila is eight, and the truth is that the players are delighted,’ the 41-year-old Mexican, who has won 23 doubles titles and four Grand Slam finals, one in doubles and three in mixed, told CLAY.
The wanderings of the little Gonzalezes are reflected in the Instagram account @losgonzalezdetour, in which Matías and Camila achieve what many journalists can only dream of: sitting down, in a couple of seasons, to chat with stars such as Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Carlos Alcaraz, Holger Rune or Paula Badosa. Or having a conversation with Queen Camilla during Wimbledon.
‘It was my wife’s idea in 2023 in Los Cabos. My son loves tennis, my daughter doesn’t love it as much, but obviously she’s already on the tour,’ explains Gonzalez.
‘One of my son’s favourites was Cameron Norrie, and there in Los Cabos he was the first one we interviewed. It went well, people liked him, and from there we did Rodrigo Pacheco and a couple of Mexicans. But the big impact of my children was when they interviewed Djokovic in Turin. That one was very good, Djokovic was very nice.”
What is Matias and Camila’s secret when it comes to seducing players and getting them to tell new stories?
‘It’s a different interview that they do, because it’s not an interview, they are talking, they don’t ask them anything. They ask them if they have pets, what they eat, and one or the other, what’s your favourite tournament. And then, because they are children, because of these types of questions, the players, to tell you the truth, have been delighted’.
‘My wife is a kind of producer, she puts together the questions and everything. We did it so that they, as they are doing homeschooling and as they are travelling a lot, they can learn. They also learn a little bit of how to get around, to speak English. I think they enjoyed it, they are having fun that way and it went well’.
The González brothers are different. While Matías ‘asks more about tennis’, Camila, who cares very little about tennis, concentrates on finding out if her interviewee ‘has dogs or cats, if he likes sweets, what he likes to eat’.
‘Matias wants to be a professional tennis player, maybe Camila wants to be a journalist… She is the one who goes and asks the players, ‘Can I interview you? And the player is amazed, and says yes, of course’.
González didn’t want a tennis player for a son, because it’s a sport that involves ‘a lot of sacrifices’. Until he changed his mind.
“I can guide him quite well, what he has to do and what he doesn’t have to do. My idea with both of them is that they both play professional sports, or at least that it will give him a university scholarship and everything else. I love sport, not just tennis, but all football, American football, golf.”
Matías González has a first-rate coach: ‘Sometimes I’ve just finished training and I’m tired, but he gets on the court with us and we throw him a ball…. Or I hit it hard, I hit it at 200 kilometres per hour, he gets all the way back and, if he can, he hits it back. He’s learning, he’s watching tennis, I think in the end he’ll be able to get something out of it.”
Children are an increasingly common presence on the tour, says Gonzalez.
‘There are more and more of them. Before, maybe players retired at 28, but now we’re 41 and we’re still playing. And at that age, or younger, many people already have children. It’s a subject that my wife has talked about with the Federers, who used to travel with their children on the tour, just like us’.
