French Open Day 8

Well, it looked like it could be a thrilling day of tennis, but it turned out to be a bit of a dud. In eight matches, the losing player only won one set - Flavia Pennetta won the second set in a tiebreak to Caroline Wozniacki, before dropping the third 6-2. Other than that, the winning player in the other 7 matches had no real trouble to speak of. In fact, Youzhny won his match after only a single set when Tsonga retired. There were two notable upsets - second seed Venus Williams lost to Nadia Petrova and Andy Murray lost to Tomas Berdych, but neither player was really in the match. Clay isn't Murray or Venus's favorite surface, and the conditions were particularly today.

All in all, it was a fairly humdrum day - there weren't any matches where the outcome was in doubt for very long, which makes for some perfunctory tennis. The match between Federer and Wawrinka looked like it could get interesting in the second set, but after the #2 Swiss dropped his break advantage and lost the set in a tiebreak, it was all over.

The second half of the quarterfinals takes place tomorrow, and it should be more exciting; it's tough to figure out how it could be more uninspired. Nadal and Djokovic should both have relatively easy paths through to the quarters, as Nadal plays young Tomaz Bellucci, who may go on to have a good clay-court career, but he isn't at a level where he can compete with Nadal. Djokovic gets surprise 4th-rounder Robbie Ginepri, who shouldn't have a prayer to come through, but I didn't see him coming out of the fourth round. If he gets this scalp, it will be just unbelievable.

The other two matches could be much more competitive. Teimuraz Gabashvili, who hasn't even come close to dropping a set in six matches, plays Jurgen Melzer. Melzer has to be relieved not to see Andy Roddick on the other side of the net, but with the way that Gabashvili likes these conditions, he might have preferred the American. I think the qualifier has a real chance of reaching the quarters, which would be an astounding feat. And the highlight match, as far as I'm concerned, is Nicolas Almagro against Fernando Verdasco: two big-hitting lefty Spaniards. Verdasco is the more experienced and more attuned to the surface, so I give him the advantage. But he's also played a lot more tennis and has to be a little jaded.

On the women's side, Serena is in action - here's hoping she's feeling better for her match against Shahar Peer. Jelena Jankovic plays Daniela Hantuchova as well. The third match on the women's side is the head-scrather Jarmila Groth against Yaroslava Schvedova. The real exciting match-up on the women's side is Justine Henin against Sam Stosur. Can Justine's run continue? She got past Sharapova, but it wasn't easy.

The tournament is entering the second week, and things are (at least facially) getting more exciting. Let's see if the tennis can start to match up to the potential.