French Open Day 1

With the French Open at last underway, there are already a handful of upsets and exciting matches. JW Tsonga nearly proved to be the first big upset by a top-ten player, as he almost lost to German Daniel Brands, but barely managed to pull out the win 7-5 in the fifth set. Kudos to Tsonga for pulling through a tough first round, and also to Brands, who nearly came through with the best win of his career. Hopefully, Tsonga can take confidence from that tough win on center court.

Also, big win for Frenchman Edouard Roger-Vasselin, who lost the first two sets to Kevin Anderson of South Africa, only to come back and win the match in five. Normally, the hometown boys have trouble performing on their biggest stage, so this is an encouraging result. The other five-set matches of the day were Fabio Fognini over Nicolas Massu and Marco Chiudinelli over Somdev Devvarman. Good wins for both guys.

On the subject of good wins, defending champ Kuznetsova came through her first match with relatively little difficulty, which is encouraging, consider how poor her year has been so far. Venus Williams also made it through to the second round.

On the subject of upsets, though, Victoria Azarenka could barely keep the ball in play in her lopsided defeat to Gisela Dulko, and Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez somehow managed to lose to somebody I'd never heard of before - Akgul Amanmuradova, a player from Uzbekistan. Good for her, but it's a shame for Martinez Sanchez, who had just won her biggest title ever in Rome.

The only noteworthy upset on the men's side was Julien Benneteau over Ernests Gulbis, who unfortunately injured himself midway through the second set. It's a real shame for Gulbis, who was experiencing a career resurgence, to get sidelined at this point with an injury. Here's hoping it isn't serious.

Looking ahead to tomorrow's action, the biggest match of the day is Murray-Gasquet. I maintain that the winner of that match has a good chance of making it all the way to the semifinals. There are a lot of other players in action tomorrow whose form will establish how far people will expect them to make it in this tournament. Djokovic and Wozniacki are question marks, and will remain so until they get out on court tomorrow. Ana Ivanovic is another player who isn't getting much attention, which is a shame considering the fact that she's a former champion here. And Gael Monfils has been injured for much of the year, but he loves the atmosphere here and could make some noise. And Elena Dementieva! All these players could do very well, but they sure haven't shown their best form lately.

I'm also excited about Kei Nishikori in action, and Jesse Witten against Marcos Baghdatis. Melanie Oudin is out there as well, and though no one will expect her to win, it would be nice to have some Americans take a few matches. We're 2-2 so far, but that's because Venus won and a women's first-round match was between two U.S. players. John Isner plays Golubev way out on court 14, and Michael Yani and Lukas Lacko need to finish their match from today. It's tied at 8-8 in the fifth.

Of course, Federer and Serena are also in action, and they should blow through their matches in not much time. If they even look troubled against the opponents they're facing, I think that will not bode well for their chances in the next two weeks. I don't expect that they'll have any problems, as Peter Luczak and Stefanie Voegele are probably going to be outclassed on court and overcome by the occasion. Still, should be fun to watch the best players in the world at work!