Written by Pat Davis | 24 May 2010

Zee French, they are a funny race, no?  So said I to myself on Saturday as I watched Richard Gasquet struggle to maintain his excellent starting form against Fernando Verdasco in the final from Nice.  The Frenchman displayed superb serving and shotmaking skills in seizing the first set.  Then things got more problematic:  Verdasco fought his way back in, as well he should.  He was the favorite in this final, and he has shown good form this year.  Richard has not.  Mostly he just hasn't played that much, but it was nice to see him get to a final.  But would he pull the match out?  Could he stay the course? 

Gasquet hung on to win the final, but the question asked on Saturday could also have been posed today in Gasquet's first round match from Roland Garros.  Could Gasquet show strength now that he had gotten himself two sets up on Andy Murray?   Yes, that's right - TWO sets up on Britain's finest.  How could he not pull this win out? 

Easy.  It was pretty incredible to sit there and watch the life seep out of this match from Gasquet's perspective.  But seep out it did.  Murray came back and hauled his victim to defeat in five sets.  Shades of disaster - the very same lads gave us a similar match from Wimbledon two years ago.  Murray came back there against Gasquet from also being two sets down.   Lightning does strike twice it would seem.  I was a bit surprised the crowd more or less tolerated their lad's debacle; they probably should have been yelling for his blood by the end, but then maybe they've been done this road before with Reeshard and they know the drill.  A deep sigh and the Gallic shrug brought this match to a conclusion.

Ernests Gulbis must have wondered if he hadn't been struck by lightning too.  The rising Latvian star has shown excellent form lately so we could have expected him to get by Julian Benneteau in his first round match.  But the Frenchman played extremely well and got up two sets on Gulbis before he retired from a thigh pull at 1-0 in the third.  That got a big boohoo out of me.  Gulbis was in Federer's corner of the draw, and I was distinctly looking forward to another match between the two guys.   Not to be this year unfortunately, at least not at the French.

There were two other match-ups here that looked interesting:  Andy Roddick will play Jarkko Nieminen on Tuesday, and because Roddick has pretty much blown off the clay season so far I wouldn't be surprised at all if the Finn took him for a ride on the clay.   He's a crafty and versatile player who's been around forever, so this one could be interesting. 

I also saw the names of Tommy Robredo and Victor Troicki pop up in another interesting first-rounder.  When I selected my Tennis Channel draw, I wondered about this match.  But surely Robredo could pull it out?   No dice here either.  Robredo lost rather tamely in three sets.  Perhaps hard courts are his better surface after all.  Troicki has been fighting to establish himself over the last year or so, and this is an excellent first round confidence-booster for him.  Thanks for screwing my draw up, Tommy!

The women aren't that thrilling at this early stage.  Not unless you like seeing public maulings being performed by the seeds against much lower-ranked players.  I particularly like the play of Alisa Kleybanova and Aravane Rezai, who just beat Venus in a final.  Both women easily pulverized their first round opponents today, and I am expecting deep runs from both of them.

But what on earth has happened to Victoria Azarenka?  I saw her lose against a nobody yesterday and I felt like I was watching an entirely different player from the one who was performing so well just a year ago.  She has gone through a coaching change and a spate of injuries, so she hasn't found the consistency her game needs to keep her hitting with power and confidence.  Her serve has gone off, and her body looks strangely different too, as if she had started to bulk her lean frame up a bit but then she got scared of the extra mass and backed off.  Her movement looks suspect.  Now her body seems a bit ill-defined and uncertain, perhaps a mirroring now of what her game has become.  This is sad.   I hope she finds her way again.

Stay tuned!

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