Yesterday was a strange day at the French Open. It wasn’t easy to predict how the action was going to unfold, but at least there should be a few “given” matches. But it didn’t pan out that way.
Firstly, Roddick played a horrible match, losing against Gabashvili in three straight sets. He just couldn’t get enough lead on the ball. They were all sitting up for Gabashvili, who played aggressively and hit 60 winners. Maybe it wasn’t so strange that he couldn’t get the needed weight on his shots, that was always a reason that Roddick didn’t do well on clay, but especially so on the slow Susanne Lenglen court.
Then contrary to what everybody thought (including myself), Ferrer crashed out in three straight sets against Melzer. Amazing effort from the Austrian of course, but Ferrer must have had an off day not to even take a set.
At least I was right that Ferrero vs Ginepri was going to be a five-setter, but I picked Ferrero as the winner, not Ginepri. In the end I was wrong. Again.
I had a hunch that Kohlschreiber would beat Verdasco. It was going to be a hard-fought encounter and it was. Serving at 5-5 in the fourth set Verdasco got severe pain in his foot (seemed to be the toes) and everybody thought the match would be over. He lost the set in the tiebreak and didn’t seem to move properly. But Kohlschreiber didn’t seem to block out the thought of his opponent’s injury and he seemed to play worse for a while. Verdasco then forgot the pain or something and managed to win the 5th set 6-3. It was a strange match, but it is impressive that Verdasco managed to win it in the end.
I also believed in Dolgopolov, the Ukrainian junior who has played extremely well previous rounds, but he was trashed by Almagro in three straight sets. Wrong again.
As I wasn’t wrong enough already, Ljubicic also lost in three straight sets against Bellucci.
In the end I was only right about two matches yesterday. Nadal beating Hewitt and Djokovic beating Hanescu. Let’s see if I can do better today. I hope you didn’t bet on my predictions!
