French Open Day 3

Now that we're through round one of the French Open, everyone who's going to have played a match has done so. Half the field is cleared out - well, almost. There's one match left to play - Xavier Malisse is up two sets to love against Simon Greul. Other than that, everything is set. There were a few relatively minor upsets today, but there's yet to be a big player to fall. One of the players who really wasn't a factor this year despite being the losing finalist last yeast was Dinara Safina, who collapsed against 39-year old Kimiko Date Krumm. It probably wasn't a back injury that cost her this match. She needs to get her head on straight.

The other player who lost because of mental problems was Sam Querrey, who lost to American Robbie Ginepri. After losing the second set in a tiebreak and getting broken to open the third set, Querrey just checked out. He said afterward that he didn't want to be on court, and he played like it. He seemed to be willing to admit his behavior was unprofessional, but the fact is that he's now 0-4 at Roland Garros, and there's no reason for him to have that kind of record.

On the other hand, American Andy Roddick got his clay court season off to a belated but successful start after beating Jarkko Nieminen in five sets. And the other players in Roddick's section of the draw that could have posed the greatest threat also lost today, so rather than a pair of Argentines waiting for him in the next two rounds, he's got a couple of Slovaks instead. He'll have Blaz Kavcic in the next round, and possibly Grega Zemjla instead of Juan Monaco after that.

Beyond that, the players who were expected to win managed to win today. French teen Gianni Mina put up a surprisingly good fight against Rafael Nadal, acquitting himself admirably, despite losing to the tune of 6-2, 6-2, 6-2. We'll see him here again. Other than Roddick, the only other five-set match today was Horacio Zeballos's win over Martin Fischer, 10-8 in the fifth.

Looking ahead to tomorrow, we're back to the top half of the draw. There are actually some pretty good matches tomorrow. Gael Monfils takes on Fabio Fognini, Robin Soderling takes on Taylor Dent, Tsonga takes on Ouanna, and Murray faces Chela. There's an outside chance of an upset in any of those matches - as well as 32nd seed Guillermo Garcia-Lopez against Thiemo De Bakker. Leonardo Mayer and Julien Benneteau, Carsten Ball against Viktor Troicki, and John Isner faces Marco Chiudinelli!

This is really a pretty great lineup for a second round of a grand slam. Lots of great matches on outside courts, between players with great stylistic match-ups. Normally, grand slams take more than a round to get going, but I'm pretty excited about quite a few of these. With any luck, the tournament could really kick into high gear tomorrow.