I wonder what is up with Safina. She seems terrible sometimes.
I thought about predicting Safina for the win :eek: just on the principle that someone so talented has to win sometime! I think Date Krumm is amazing.
I saw the tale end of Hewitt’s match - he certainly looks hungry now - or still really. I didn’t like him in his younger days, but I really like him now! & so far I think his outfit looks the most stylish of the mens’s.
& so far with the women’s fashions, I find Sharapova’s outfit dull & unflattering. I don’t mind Venus playing in her nightie but the “bare” bottom pants look is so unappealing.
I forgot she made the finals here last year and the year before. That’s really a huge upset. It’ll do a number on her ranking, and to make matters worse KDR was apparently not healthy - she was having leg cramps and double-faulting like it was going out of style.
Other than the Safina match - can I say she Krummbled? - there were really no surprises on either side yesterday. All the other women’s seeds won easily. Robby Ginepri beat Sam Querrey, who apparently was just exhausted from playing a lot of matches this year. Monaco lost. Today I see Robin Soderling just demolished Dent. Dent won all of two games total. Venus also reached the third round.
Right. She can seem so great and so terrible within one tournament even.
She’s more inconsistent than Marat.
Federer won in straight sets, but it looks like he didn’t play so great. Falla actually served for the first set at 6-5 before Federer got into a higher gear, and the third set was reasonably close. Play has been interrupted three times by rain. No major upsets today - in fact the only seeded player to lose so far was Garcia-Lopez, the men’s #32. Kuznetsova and Rezai both lost the first sets but won their matches. Gael Monfils is winning his match, but before he does I wanted to type the name of his opponent: Fabio Fogini. I am dubbing him “The Great Fogini.”
Speaking of interesting name, one of the losers today was Lukas Lacko. Lacko deserves some recognition because his first round match was one of the longest at the French Open since tiebreakers were introduced. He beat an American player, Michael Yani, in a match that took 4 hours and 56 minutes to play. They palyed a total of 71 games, which tied the tournament’s post-tiebreak record. Lacko won the fifth set 12-10. They started playing on Sunday and finished Monday because of darkness. The three middle sets all went to tiebreakers, and each guy only lost serve once in the whole match: Lacko in the first set and Yani in the fifth. I doubt he fully recovered for today’s match, but he managed to take the first set off Mikhail Youzhny before losing the next three. He’s 22 and it’s his first time in the main draw in Paris, so it sounds like he has some guts.
The Great Fogini has pulled a rabbit out of his hat and won the third set!
Monfils went up two breaks in the fourth, but once again The Great Fogini proved to be a master of the death-defying escape! He won five games in a row, and they’re going to a fifth set.
Wow @ the Monfils/Fognini match!
That was some tanty that Fognini threw. He was right - but they should still crack down on that stuff.
& I loved Monfil’s outfit & general sense of showmanship.
The time differences aren’t suiting me at all (I’m in NZ)
I fell asleep in Venus’s match. I think what is bothering me about her outfit is the white visor & shoes with the black lace dress. It just looks wrong.
I woke up in time to see Falla break Federer. I toddled off to bed, but the straight set score seems to indicate that The Fed had it pretty easy after that.
& my men’s doubles prediction has already been proved wrong.
Look at these conditions.
After I got home and started watching the match on TV instead of just looking at the score online, I saw the name is Fognini, not Fogini. (Which made me feel like a nini.) But the nickname still works and I stand by my pointless rooting interest. If they ever get to play today, it’ll be interesting to see what happens - if either guy fails to warm up and get into the swing of things immediately, he could be off the court in about five minutes. The Great Fognini had three match points slip through his fingers yesterday, which is death for a lot of upset bids. We’ll see if he can bounce back.
One of the TTC announcers reported that she thought the umpire of the Fognini/Monfils duel let them decide whether to play on and both agreed to play.
I didn’t think Federer looked all that sharp, either, but he generally gains steam as he moves farther along. Of course, if Nadal is on his game, he’ll beat Federer. In four. That’s my prediction, folks, and I’m sticking with it.
Finally getting a chance to see Venus and her “outfit”. Would it be hypocritical of me to say that her parents must be so “proud”, but I wish some of the Russians parents would be as “proud.”
It’s over! The Great Fognini has made Gael Monfils… DISAPPEAR!
Poetic justice really.
& it sure didn’t look like both of them wanted to continue the night before.
There’s going to be a lot of action today and maybe tomorrow as they try to make up for all those rain delays. We’ve already had our first upset today - Fernando Gonzalez (#12) lost to Alexandr Dolgopolov Jr., a Ukranian player who has a lifetime record of 12-16 and had never played in the main draw at a Grand Slam before. So Dolgopolov is now in the third round. The French Open web site has no information about him, probably because he just changed the spelling of his name. Jie Zheng (25) lost on the women’s side, to a Russian player I haven’t heard of - Pivovarova. Serena, Nadal, Henin and Sharapova won; Hewitt got pushed to five sets by Denis Istomin of Uzbekistan but won the match. (Istomin is playing doubles with Dolgopolov, by the way.) Federer is up two sets to none and it looks like he’s cruising.
You mean the French Open is played during the day now? 
They just now stopped play over there. They wanted to fit in as many matches as they could after the two days of rain. Petrova and Rezai (the #2 ranked French woman) are tied at 7 in the third set. Petrova had a few chances to serve it out, but she couldn’t do it and finally they called it off.
One more big upset near the end of the day: Kuznetsova lost in three sets to Maria Kirilenko, so she’s not going to repeat as champion. I hope she doesn’t go another five years between major wins. She’s going to fall out of the top 10 with that loss. Just from eyeballing the rankings I think she’ll end up in the low teens. You never know what’s up with her. Dementieva got pushed to the edge but she managed to win in three sets. Youzhny and Troicki also didn’t finish their match, but Youzhny is in position to win.
Gonzalez has to be really disappointed - it’s not just that he lost, but the French is actually his best major for whatever reason (I think of him as a hardcourt player for sure). He made the semifinals last year and he didn’t even put up a fight against a guy who’s never played in a Slam before. Unless he was hurt that’s a very bad loss.
Isner lost to Tomas Berdych, so there are now two American guys left in the draw: Roddick and Robby Ginepri. So there are as many U.S. players as Swiss after The U.S. is tied with Switzerland. Federer and Wawrinka are going to play in the fourth round. I know who I’m picking. (Roddick and Ginepri have only played two matches.) Cilic vs. Soderling could be a great slugfest on Sunday. Murray beat Marcos Baghdatis. I keep hoping Baghdatis will have another breakthrough - although if he does I don’t think it would be at the French - but it keeps looking less likely.
Yep, same here. And as his seed slips further, his early round matches become harder. Andy Murray in the second or third round is a bummer of a draw.