French Open 2010

Started on Sunday..

Federer had a pretty easy 1st round win
Novak Djokovic won in 4 sets and was patchy but looking solid enough.
Andy Murray won in 5 sets - making very hard work for himself.
Tsonga also won in 5 doing the same.
Robin Soderling smashed some young French guy 6-0 6-2 6-3

Nadal is in very good form this season - he plays his 1st round match tonight 3rd match on the second court.

Roddick also in action tonight too.

Watched Federer last night after the football and it's first time I've watched tennis in a few years. I had forgotten how good it is to watch at that level. His opponent didn't play badly but Federer was just stunning. Will have to have another look next chance I get

Agreed but to be fair he played Richard Gasquet - bit tougher assignment than a few of the other guy's first up clashes.



gc.

Nadal smashed some bunny last night,

Roddick looked good after winning his first set and then proceeded to make a day's work out of it - winning in 5 sets. His opponent was very good but couldn't keep it up long enough to down him.

Federer's 2nd match is on tonight (coverage starts at 9pm so he'll be on 10.30-ish I imagine). He's playing 70th ranked Alejandro Falla.

Dementieva, Soderling, Tsonga, Gael Monfils and Venus Williams are also playing tonight.

Henin is expected to play havoc with the woman's draw again because of her lowly 22nd seeding, not as bad as beating Demenieva in the first round of the Australian but for someone who won 4 in a row and made a Grand Slam final in her first tournament back to be seeded at 22 is a bit of a joke.

It goes rankings at the French. If you haven't played enough tournaments to get a higher seeding that's just the luck of the draw for everyone.

There have been issues at Wimbledon a few times because the seeds there are done by taking the top 32 players entered (automatically seeds) are rearranged slightly using a surface-based system. On occasion it would see a mostly clay-court player dropped below another who'd shown better grass court results - from memory Thomas Muster or Sergi Bruguera was well pissed about it one year in the early 90s.

I started to watch some of the French Open last night before the League started. I could only managed 5 minutes before I had to turn off that shrieking idiot Venus Williams. Who wants to watch someone pretty much just scream for an hour.

Well yes but given that the Grand Slams can set their own seedings it does seem silly to ignore obvious mistakes in seeding based on the rankings... For example, it's fairly inconsequential but Rafa should be number 1 seed for the men.

Jono... Why should Rafa be number one seed? Seeds are based on the past year's history and ranking. Federer pwns Nadal in that respect currently - he is current holder of the French Open title, as well as 2 of the 3 slams since and runner up in the other. Nadal got to one semi-final in that entire time. If you can't compete because you are injured it is the same as if you did play and simply sucked - it's just your bad luck and they don't compensate for it (nor do the rankings overall). They compensate for a previous year's results on a surface and overall. Nadal simply doesn't have them.

Suggesting *any surface* players should be rated higher than their rank as a standard will cause a situation where guys ranked just outside of the seedings will have a field day and, subjectively, an easier draw early on. That would cause more issues than it aims to solve.

Remember when Nadal was top seed for the US Open 2 years ago and also the following Aussie Open? Would you say he deserved to be there? Did based on his year he did... But if you chose to apply surface history weighting he couldn't back it up - He'd never even been to a US Open final while Federer had already done 4 in a row at that stage. Not to an Aussie either. In fact he'd never been to a final on a hard court (and hasn't since either). His hard-court seeding should be adjusted by at least 3 or 4 places at every hard-court Slam if the notion is applied fairly - which is exactly why it isn't. They only use it to adjust obvious anomalies.

Oh.. Federer's game last night. After a very close 1st set he wiped the guy.. Good clay court player ranked 70th.. Kinda funny when you think that guy was higher ranked than anyone any male NZ player has beaten for a decade ha ha...

Only the other week they were proudly saying our top player had beaten his first top 100 player (ranked 75 or thereabouts). Federer on the other hand hasn't lost to someone outside the top 6 in a Grand Slam since 2003.

Because barring injury he's utterly dominated on clay, which is reflected is reflected in his results this clay court season. I think you'd be very hard pressed to say that he's not the number 1 clay court player in the world. Going back to Henin, do you not think it's an obvious anomally tha a player that won 4 French Opens in a row before retiring at number 1 in the rankings and made the final of her first tournament back (a Grand Slam no less) is seeded 22?

I do see your point about not giving seeding boosts to players who are only good on one surface but IMO Henin would definitely fall into the obvious anomally category, and Nadal would have a strong case - although given that Federer is the defending champion and number 1 I can see why you wouldn't agree here.

Wow.. anyone watch the Federer Soderling game? The first set was some astonishing play from Federer and then Soderling proved how much he's improved in the last year. 2009 Soderling would have been wiped off the court by Federer playing the way he did but 2010 Soderling seems to have done tons of work on getting into position better so he can unleash more often.

Magnas Norman his coach can be very proud - he's taken a maybe player and made him better than Murray, Del Potro or Djokovic could dream of being. Let's see if he can keep it up for more than one match.

Wasn't overly impressed with Fed after the second set but Soderling was just in fine form.

This also ends Federer's run of consecutive Grand Slam semi-final appearances.. 23 in a row - all the way back to Wimbledon 2004. A record which will unlikely ever be beaten in our lifetime.