Possibly the official French Open Thread...

Maybe Federer and Nadal should have to use squash rackets in the first week of the French.

Sharapova actually played some pretty inspired tennis today, she looks more and more comfortable on the red stuff.

Whiny bitchboy Lleyton Hewitt knocked off one of the French's obscure recent champions, Gaston Gaudio.

 

I am a big Venus Williams fan and after her victory where she clocked in a record serve, she could possibly win this tourney. I think she could be the dark horse is she stays consistent and doesn't get a lot of errors.

 

Sharapova's dress -- I can't decide if I like it or not. It's better than her maternity dress from a coupla years ago.

Venus is gonna have to play a lot better than she did yesterday to have any sort of chance of advancing into the second week. She looked awful after she was up 5-1 in the second set.

 

Would like to see Ana Ivanovic get her breakthrough here.

 

Venus isn't into Italian bitchboys anymore. I think her flavour of choice at the moment is golfer Hank Kuehne (sp?)

Man, DirecTV is great, although I'm not supposed to admit that. Five feeds from 5 a.m. I ain't sleeping a wink.

The biggest difference between clay and the other stuff, beyond the fact that it's hard to ace and it's hard to put away a winner, is the footing.

Look at how the rest of the universe plays on the stuff. They slide into the ball. It's nice, and relaxed, and gives them an extra step. The Americans, who by nature of the "We play on hard courts, therefore we refuse to acknowledge that half the tournament in the world are played on the red stuff" mentality, never learn to do it. They run and slip and slide and only slide after they've hit the ball, which is completely useless.

It's kind of like very good skiiers who are used to perfect conditions, all of a sudden having to race on ice, or in three-feet of powder. They're lost.

The best clay court players use the entire court. They hit angles, they hit drop shots, they approach the net judiciously. It's really, really good tennis precisely because it's not dominated by the serve. Although sometimes it takes awhile.

The first two sets of whiny bitch Hewitt against Gutless Gaudio this morning was unbelievably high-quality stuff.

Henin wins on the the clay not only because her footwork is good, but because she can hit every shot. The bangers have only one way to play, and the long rallies wear them down.

Roddick just isn't nimble enough to be successful, although he's game enough. He's clunky as a runner. But it's not that he doesn't try, or he makes too much money, or that he's already bagged some good-looking babes. He's just a limited tennis player whose limitations are exposed by the surface. But he'll keep trying.

He got a brutal draw. His opponent that day was is very talented player coming back from injury, and Roddick's backhand is too big a weakness. His groundstrokes sit up on the stuff, are too short, and when he's not confident (as he isn't on the dirt) he retreats way behind the baseline, making his groundies even shorter in the court.

Blake was the one who disappointed me. He just went away and acted like a whiny bitch as he lost to a guy nearly 7 feet tall who has half his footspeed. Just started whaling at everything. Not impressive at all, and the biggest reason why he's never broken through in a big, big way.

Note the difference between he and Hewitt, who was thoroughly outplayed for the first two sets this morning but just hung in there, and never gave up.

 

There goes Venus. 27-year-old body just isn't made for the long rallies on the slow clay. She did look good enough to hopefully make some noise at Wimbledon. Serena is the last standing American in the singles portion of the tournament.

I still have one last hope for a great Venus run in a Grand Slam, if not I'll always enjoy the 2005 Wimbledon.

 

Jankovic is a damned good up-and-comer. Has a great game on clay, and you ruined by afternoon French Open watching again!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fucking tape delay. Fuckabuncha ESPN.

 

Pssst ... DirecTV. It's live and it's got a lot of channels.

 

Pssst . . . I live in an apartment, and I'm not allowed to attach a dish to the building.

Again, fuchabuncha ESPN.

 

It's not ESPN's fault.

They don't have the main rights to the tournament. Their broadcast window didn't start until 3 p.m. today, after all the matches had finished.

They picked the most compelling matchup to show, and one that most people --- even with DirecTV --- might not have seen because it began a 5 a.m. EDT and was over by 6:30 a.m.

And finally . . . fuckabuncha Dementieva. Fourteen double-faults in two sets.

 

Sorry I'll do a spoilers check next time . I'm not familiar with ESPN's match schedule since I'm always in the office.

 

They don't come on till 1 EDT or later. I hate cable.