Hey Roland Garros, I Meant It - Get A Roof

Welcome to another odyssey in the adventures of Roland Garros and how much they need a roof. It is SO IRRITATING waiting till 4pm Paris time for play to start when you're in Australia and that means it's midnight. Yes, I'm whinging like a spoiled bratty little fangirl, but that is exactly what I am, so come on, Roland Garros. Get with the program and get a roof so I don't have to put everyone whose second round singles match got canned into the losers column. Remember Wimbledon in '07 when there were matches that took, like, five days? (Rafa, Yoker, I'm looking at you). YOU DO NOT WANT THIS.

Okay. Let's go.

The winners: Fabio Fognini. I know he only squeaked in by the skin of his very teeth and I should be putting him in this column, but this was such a spectacular victory, after all those shenanigans with the light and whatnot. Well done that Fog.

Also, Australian women's tennis in general. Sophie Ferguson may have lost, but both Jarmila Groth and Anastasia Rodionova won and won relatively easily as well. And if (fingers crossed) Sam Stosur gets through, that is three Aussie ladies in Round 3. And that is quite something.

I'd also like to mention Elena Dementieva. No one is talking about her, and I think this is a good thing. She is always over hyped in Australia and it never amounts to anything. I personally think she does much better with under hype... which is why it gets nasty when the last few rounds come around and everyone is hyped.

The losers: Well, Gael Monfils, obviously. Sucks to be you. 'Nuff on that.

We have to talk Ana Ivanovic here. I wrote a positively cheery series of posts about her a few weeks back, and yes, it was a blip. It is rare that a player has a blip of positivity rather than negativity, but it looks like what that was. I didn't expect her to beat Alisa Kleybanova but I expected her to do a little better than three games, which was, frankly, pathetic. Nothing more to say.

The disappointments: Agnieszka Radwanska. I honestly don't understand why she is seeded #8, because she never seems to be around when things get all second weekish in Slams. This said, I really like her game and I wish she, you know, won more. Very disappointing result. Yaroslava Shvedova is an excellent player - I saw her play at Hopman Cup, and was impressed - but Radwanska should certainly not be losing this tamely.

And much as I am parochially glad Anastasia Rodionova came through, I'm a bit disappointed in Vera Zvonareva as well. Is she still injured? She seems always to be injured. I didn't see the match, but this is really not a good result for her.

Oh, and Monfils. He should have been able to win that one.

The scraped-in-by-the-skin-of-teeth: The obvious choice is Fognini, but let's talk about those big seeds going four - specifically, the Andies. Andy Murray went four against the frankly over Juan Ignacio Chela and Andy Roddick went four against Blaz 'my name is awesome but no one knows who I am' Kavcic. Neither of them should really have gone four here.

And it wasn't really skin of teeth stuff, but I thought Jelena Jankovic was going to have a slightly easier time of it. Maybe her shiny yellow dress has made me a little over optimistic about her chances...?

One to watch: The selfsame Blaz Kavcic. I have no idea who this dude is, but if you can get through a round in a Slam and take a set off a top ten player, you've got a little something something going on. And also his name is totally awesome.

Domo and Muzza, Me Old Mates

Honestly, some people are soooooo bogan. 'Domo' and 'Muzza' are both tennis players - can you guess who they are? I'm sure if these players heard 'let's go, Domo!' or 'c'arn, Muzza!' shouted at them (which they did on Thursday at the Open!) they wouldn't recognise their own names either... it was pretty funny. But bogan. Hilariously so.

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I started my Thursday at the Aussie Open just before eleven, having a bit of a wander round to see who was hitting up before settling in at Court 19 to watch Dominika 'Domo' Cibulkova play Chan Yung-Jan, which was the most one-sided match I have seen thus far in Melbourne - Domo won her first match in a double bagel, and the first set of this match was a bagel as well. She is really, really good. If she is not top ten by the end of the year I will eat an item of my own clothing. But good as she is, the match was so one-sided it was boring, and I could see Jelena Jankovic practicing over on Court 17, so I left after the first set.

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I watched a bit of Jankovic, but then I heard a very familiar sounding shriek from the next court, so I mosied on over to Court 16 and caught the majority of Dinara Safina's practice - possibly the most unusual practice session I have seen yet. We've all read the stories of how Zeljko Krajan, her coach, has calmed her down and sorted her out on court, and it is my personal belief that he has done this by making her have all her temper tantrums in her practice sessions instead. Seriously, these two scream at each other like nothing else I have ever seen. I think I've commented on how much of a bitch Zeljko was to her during the oncourt coaching in the final of Sydney, and nothing was different here. Okay, so maybe they were a bit calmer, but this relationship has serious fire. If he wasn't wearing a wedding ring, wasn't five hundred years older and a foot shorter than she is, I'd think they were having some kind of clandestine love/hate relationship. But it's certainly working!

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Safina was replaced on Court 16 by Ivanovic, so I watched her hit for a little while before swapping practice courts again to watch Baghdatis, who replaced Jankovic. (He looks so different without his hair!) Then I decided I should probably, you know, watch some actual tennis, so I headed out to Court 8 to watch a bit of Andreas Beck and Jurgen Melzer (is he still dating Domo? She seems to be swap them round a bit - she's been linked to both Monfils and Stakhovsky as well, if memory serves.) This was a good match - I watched the second set, which ended in a breaker, and it was a really tight one. Melzer levelled it at one set all, and it was well worth the watching.

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I headed back out to the practice courts after that (yeah, I have an addiction problem, so sue me.) Djokovic was practicing, and it gave me a great deal of satisfaction to see that although there was a bit of a crowd watching him, it was absolutely NOTHING compared to the mobs that Federer draws. No one else draws that kind of mobs - not Ivanovic or Jankovic or the Williamses, not Hewitt or Murray or Djokovic or even Nadal. Is this the same worldwide? I love the notion of Federer as a universal star. There was a good match on Court 19 so I watched some of that - a very intriguing clash between Fabio Fognini and Nicolas Almagro. Almagro won easily in the end, but it was Fognini that drew my attention - he was bouncing racquets all over themselves, and he also made my favourite non-Federer shot of the tournament: he was at net, Almagro hit a volley at his toes, he dove to get it back over, fell, did a commando roll, and was back up in time to put the next one away for a winner. It was awesome. It was such a shame there are no cameras on that court, because it was a MAD shot.

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But Djokovic was gone and the crowd was a-gathering, and that only ever means one thing - a Fed storm a-brewing! I went down and scouted myself a good spot at the fence of Court 16. At length, he did come out (unlike his Monday no show) - but he headed to Court 17! The crowd was very taken aback and swarmed after him - it was pretty funny! Being alone and also being small and quick, I got myself to an equally good position at the fence and watched the Great Man hit up for about forty-five minutes. It is such a bizarre feeling, being that close to someone that you admire so much - particularly when there is a group of teenage girls shouting propositions to him behind you! (That said, the blokes are just as bad - there was this big, burly guy next to me, and Roger came over to the fence at one point to pick up a ball, and he bellows, 'HEY ROGER! I'M HAVING A BARBIE AT MY PLACE TONIGHT - YOU'RE WELCOME TO COME!' It must be so disconcerting, trying to just have a simple hit up and to get mobbed wherever you go. I guess that's just the price you pay for being fabulous.

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When he was done (after about a thousand years of signing autographs) I went and caught the first set breaker of Ljubicic/Tsonga on the big screen. Even though Jo-W won that match, I was glad to see Ivan putting up such a good fight. He really is one of the great gentlemen of the sport, and I feel he never gets enough respect for that. He is a very lovely man. After that breaker I went and watched some of the all-Croat showdown on Show Court 2, where Ancic and Karlovic were slugging it out. There was seriously nothing between them. Karlovic probably had the ascendancy during the part of the match I watched (mostly the third set) but Ancic ended up winning - but honestly, there was no splitting them. It was good viewing.

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I nipped offsite to eat and then came back to Show Court 2 to wait for Ernests Gulbis, which meant I caught the second set of Shuai Peng and Sesil Karantcheva, which was another seriously one-sided affair. Karantcheva didn't play badly (though she was missing a few) but Peng was on fire. She is a weird player - two-handed on both sides, which always looks weird - but it really worked for her. Karantcheva looks physically stronger than Peng, but the two hands really seemed to lend her some extra power, and she has excellent precision. The set I saw was a bagel, so it wasn't long till Gulbis came out, and that was a much tighter affair. I didn't see very much at all - it started at about seven - but it was a close one. Apparently Andreev won in five... so this tournament won't be Ernests's big break, but watch out, world, watch out.

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Then it was into the arena - and what a women's match it was to start out! The whole crowd got behind Carla Suarez Navarro, especially when she won the second set. The Aussie crowd usually loves an underdog, and this wasn't an exception. And man, Venus did not look happy. You could tell she expected to win that one, and it seemed like she underestimated Carla all the way to the end... it seemed like she was waiting around for Carla to crack, and when Carla didn't... disaster for the sixth seed! But it was such a special moment, being in the crowd for that victory.

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Then there was the Murray match, which was a bit disappointing, really. There were some really good points - a lot of really long ones - but you could tell that Granollers just never, ever believed he could win. Murray was on top the whole way - and because Granollers didn't appear to be fighting that hard, the crowd didn't really get behind him at all. There was some crazy Scots cheering for their man, but on the whole, the match had no fire. However, it did produce the name 'Muzza' - by which Andy Murray will now be known to me forevermore!

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Today's Results

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Australian Open

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Men's Draw

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Rafael Nadal def. Roko Karanusic, 6-2 6-3 6-2

Gilles Simon def. Chris Guccione, 6-7 (5-7) 6-4 6-1 6-2

Andy Murray def. Marcel Granollers, 6-4 6-2 6-2

Gael Monfils def. Stefan Koubek, 6-4 6-4 3-6 6-2

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga def. Ivan Ljubicic, 6-7 (4-7) 7-6 (10-8) 7-6 (9-7) 6-2

Fernando Gonzalez def. Guillermo Canas, 7-5 6-3 6-4

James Blake def. Sebastien de Chaunac, 6-3 6-2 6-3

Mario Ancic def. Ivo Karlovic, 5-7 7-5 4-6 6-4 6-3

Igor Andreev def. Ernests Gulbis, 6-4 6-4 5-7 3-6 6-4

Tommy Haas def. Flavio Cipolla, 6-1 6-2 6-1

Richard Gasquet def. Denis Istomin, 6-3 6-4 6-4

Fernando Verdasco def. Arnaud Clement, 6-1 6-1 6-2

Jurgen Melzer def. Andreas Beck, 5-7 7-6 (9-7) 6-4 6-3

Radel Stepanek def. Michael berrer, 6-3 6-2 6-7 (3-7) 7-5

Nicolas Almagro def. Fabio Fognini, 6-2 7-5 6-0

Dudi Sela def. Victor Hanescu, 6-3 6-3 6-2

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Women's Draw

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Carla Suarez Navarro def. Venus Williams, 2-6 6-3 7-5

Samantha Stosur def. Sabine Lisicki, 6-3 6-4

Elena Dementieva def. Iveta Benesova, 6-4 6-1

Serena Williams def. Gisela Dulko, 6-3 7-5

Flavia Pennetta def. Jessica Moore, 6-4 6-1

Svetlana Kuznetsova def. Tatjana Malek, 6-2 6-2

Amelie Mauresmo def. Elena Baltacha, 4-6 6-3 6-2

Shuai Peng def. Sesil Karantcheva, 6-4 6-0

Anabel Medina Garrigues def. Julie Coin, 6-1 6-4

Virginie Razzano def. Patty Schnyder, 6-3 6-1

Alona Bondarenko def. Severine Bremond, 7-6 (7-1) 1-6 6-2

Jie Zheng def. Melinda Czink, 7-6 (7-0) 5-7 6-3

Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez def. Akgul Amanmuradova, 6-2 6-4

Victoria Azarenka def. Tathiana Garbin, 4-1 retired

Dominika Cibulkova def. Yung-Jan Chan, 6-0 6-2

Kateryna Bondarenko def. Lourdes Dominguez Lino, 7-5 7-5

Potato

Some players just fly under the radar. You know their names, you know they float around in the top hundred, and usually you know where they come from, but you wouldn't know them if you fell over them in the street and you couldn't name their significant career wins if someone paid you. On the whole, they have never been very deep at Slams - maybe an occasional round of sixteen, but rarely more than that. They do well in the IS and ISG tournaments, but are not particularly remarkable.

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One day, I am going to find out what makes these unremarkable players remarkable. Because they must be remarkable. You don't get to be in the top one hundred in the world without being a little bit remarkable. Let's name names. Potito Starace. Fabio Fognini. Jurgen Melzer. These guys have all been round for a while, but I could tell you next to nothing about them, except that Starace and Fognini are Italian and Melzer is Austrian. Oh, and Starace's name sounds like 'potato.' But that hardly takes rocket science to work out.

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Let's take Starace. He is 27. I know that. He comes from Cervinara. He plays right handed. And that's it. That is the extent of my knowledge.

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But there are other players, ranked in the same sort of area, that I know loads more about. Take Tommy Haas. Actually, he might be a bad example, because he's been up there in the top ten. According to the ATP website, Starace has never been higher than #27. Let's look at Robin Soderling, then. He's ranked #48, with a career high of #23. He plays right handed and lives in Monte Carlo.

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But I can also tell you that Soderling hates Nadal, and that it's apparently reciprocated. Soderling is considered a danger man on tour. He's quite good on grass. He's Swedish, and sometimes plays doubles with Jonas Bjorkman. Not many facts, sure, but some.

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Why do I know about Soderling? Because he's played a big match at a Slam. And I'm not just talking about a match against a big player, because Starace has played his share of those. I remember coming up against Rafa a couple of times, and losing pretty dismally. Soderling, however, was one half of that marathon five day match at Wimbledon last year, where his dislike of Rafa was fomented. And those are the things that make you remember people.

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So what can Potito do, if he wants people to remember him? He already has the advantage of a memorable, vegetablesque name. Actually, I wonder how famous he is in Italy? Is he a Hewitt or a Guccione? Or a Sirianni? There are quite a few good tennis players from Italy - there's equally forgettable Fognini and Bolelli and Seppi and Volandri. (I just went on the ATP website to see if there were any famous Italians I'd missed, and I was stunned to discover that Filippo Volandri is now ranked #138 in the world. When did that happen? He was about #30 last time I checked. What happened?) I wonder what kind of profile tennis has in Italy. How famous are these boys? And it's not like they're totally deficient in the women's draws, either - Flavia Pennetta springs inexorably to mind.

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But I'm talking about Potito's international recognition, not homegrown Italian fame. And not even household name status - just within the tennis community. (Look at me talking like I am one of the tennis community... Potito's probably done loads of wacky things that people talk about.) If you look at the press conference archive on ASAP sports, there is not one single conference from Starace. Not one.

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So if Starace wants to be famous, he has to either:

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- do well at a Slam.

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- do something stupid to get himself in the tennis news.

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- play a really, really long match at a Slam sometime.

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I don't know. Hell, why am I even writing about this? I know nothing about Starace - including whether or not he wants to be famous. Maybe he's content flying under the radar. But we'll never find out unless he does something remarkable.

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Today's Results

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Austrian Open (Kitzbuhel)

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Jurgen Melzer def. Rainer Schuettler, 2-6 7-5 7-5

Potito Starace def. Eduardo Schwank, 6-1 6-2

Juan Martin Del Potro def. Nicolas Devilder, 6-2 6-3

Victor Hanescu def. Brian Dabul, 6-3 6-4

Rainer Schuettler def. Jan Hernych, 2-6 6-4 7-5

Juan Martin Del Potro def. Sergio Roitman, 6-2 6-4

Nicolas Devilder def. Alexander Peya, 6-4 6-4

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Dutch Open Tennis (Amersfoort)

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Marc Gicquel def. Teimuraz Gabashvili, 6-4 6-1

Steve Darcis def. Christophe Rochus, 7-5 6-3

Albert Montanes def. Jose Acasuso, 6-0 6-2

Oscar Hernandez def. Marcel Granollers, 7-5 6-2

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Studena Croatia Open (Umag)

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Fernando Verdasco def. Mischa Zverev, 7-5 7-5

Fabio Fognini def. Carlos Moya, 6-4 6-3

Igor Andreev def. Guillermo Canas, 7-5 6-4

Maximo Gonzalez def. Roko Karanusic, 2-6 6-3 7-6 (7-4)

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Indianapolis Tennis Championships (Indianapolis)

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James Blake def. Woong-Sun Jun, 6-3 7-5

Sam Querrey def. Vince Spadea, 4-6 6-3 6-4

Gilles Simon def. Tommy Haas, 4-6 6-4 6-2

Sam Querrey def. Bobby Reynolds, 6-1 3-6 6-3

James Blake def. Yen-Hsun Lu, 6-2 6-0

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Bank of the West Classic (Stanford)

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Samantha Stosur def. Vera Zvonareva, 6-3 6-2

Patty Schnyder def. Alisa Kleybanova, 7-6 (10-8) 6-4

Marion Bartoli def. Anne Keothavong, 6-3 1-6 7-5

Aleksandra Wozniak def. Sybille Bammer, 6-4 7-5

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Gastein Ladies (Bad Gastein)

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Agnes Szavay def. Melanie Klaffner, 3-6 7-6 (10-8) 7-6 (7-3)

Mariya Koryttseva def. Caroline Wozniacki, 6-4 4-6 7-6 (7-5)

Pauline Parmentier def. Anna-Lena Groenefeld, 7-5 4-6 6-4

Lucie Hradecka def. Timea Bacsinszky, 6-1 6-4

Iveta Benesova def. Galina Voskoboeva, 6-4 4-6 6-1

Yvonne Meusburger def. Maret Ani 6-2 2-6 6-3

Tereza Hladikova def. Karolina Sprem, 6-3 1-6 6-4

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And in the last installment of Stars of the Past, Stars of the Future (for now!): Ernests Gulbis.

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Ernests Gulbis is the potential #1 that the world never saw coming. Like Jeremy Chardy, he exploded on the scene at Roland Garros 2008, but he's been making inroads for a lot longer than that. He attended the same tennis academy as world number #3 Novak Djokovic, the academy run by Niki Pilic. Djokovic graduated and went on to great things, as we have all seen - but it was for Ernests Gulbis that Pilic actually left the academy for a time so he could focus on one-on-one training. This teenager from Latvia has got a very special talent - perhaps one seen only once in a generation. Roger Federer turned out to be the king of his generation, the New Balls generation. Could Gulbis be the king of his?

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It seems a little pre-emptive to make this claim - and one feels that there is a man by the name of Rafael Nadal that might have something to say about that. But Ernests Gulbis has clearly got something going on. And it does seem unfair to put him in the same generation as Nadal or even his old friend Djokovic. Age is not necessarily the correct demarcation of generation. Gulbis belongs to the generation of Chardy, Cilic and Schwank - and of the four, it seems likely that he will turn out to be the best.

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Gulbis was the only man apart from Roger Federer to take a set from Nadal at Wimbledon this year. Despite the massively powerful groundstrokes of Nadal, Gulbis proved himself capable of dominating at the baseline. He is tall and thin and there seems to be little of him, but he is deceptively strong. He does not play the tennis of Fabrice Santoro, but he clearly has a very high tennis IQ. It seems only a matter of time before Gulbis breaks through with a big tournament win - and after that, who knows? The sky may well be the limit for Ernests Gulbis.