Tuesday, May 29, 2007

French Open Day 3



Sunshine in Paris brought forth nearly 11 hours of tennis completing 82 matches, as compared with but 14 matches completed during the first two days of the tournament altogether. Frenchmen Arnaud Clement and Sebastien Grosjean disappointed fans by getting knocked out in this, the first round. Americans Andy Roddick and James Blake also fell. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal advanced.

Philipp Kohlschreiber defeated Lukas Dlouhy 6-2, 3-6, 7-5, 4-6, 17-15 in 3hrs 55mins. That 32-game fifth set is an all-time record at the French, and the 71 games total ties the record.

But the story of the day is that all nine American men entered played, and at the end of the day only one remains in the tournament. Robby Ginepri's match with the Argentine Diego Hartfield was suspended due to darkness and will be complete tomorrow.

That's third seed Andy Roddick, eighth seed James Blake, Mike Russell, Vince Spadea, Robert Kendrick, Sam Querrey, Amer Delic and Justin Gimelstob. All in the first round.

It looks like all that press hype about them being unable to play on clay has gotten into their heads. Yikes, I didn't think much of it before (of course Americans aren't going to be as good on clay), but this is ridiculous.

I get the impression they think they can just play the minimal number of tournaments on clay in the runup to the French Open and expect to do well there. But they have to train on clay, develop a game for clay,


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