Rainy Day Dramas

Foul weather, as much as anything else, has been the early theme at the French Open. Coming into the event, there was widespread dread over the two-week forecast, which made it look like the tournament had been relocated from Paris in spring to London in November. On Tuesday we saw the first evidence of that gloom, as play was stopped at Roland Garros for four hours due to a heavy, lengthy shower. In case it happens again this week, I’ll start today’s notebook with a rain delay recommendation.

Radio Daze

Today’s break came with a sense of déjà vu for me. I was surrounded by voices I normally hear in the press room. Chris Clarey of the International Herald Tribune was on the Tennis Channel talking about how polyester strings, combined with powerful racquets, have brought the sport to its “belly-putter moment”—I think I disagree, but that’s a story for another day. The story for today is what I heard on Roland Garros' radio channel. There another colleague, and fellow Tennis.com writer, Matt Cronin, was wiling away the soggy hours in the studio with fellow host Gigi Salmon.

Their conversation sounded like cross between a pub debate and a relationship-advice program, with a little slumber-party speculation thrown in on the side. Matt said that the relationship between RedFoo and Vika Azarenka is a “Grand Slam win”—for which of them, I wasn’t sure. He said he thought Kei Nishikori and Urszula Radwanska would make a good couple, and that it’s harder for the women to date on tour than it is for the men, who “can pick up a different model every week” at the ATP’s player parties. Sticking with that subject, Matt and Gigi tried to imagine who might make a plausible boyfriend for Marion Bartoli. If an answer ever came, I didn’t catch it.

In between, there were discussions about why England has so few clothes-drying machines; which is better for chopping wood—an axe or a chainsaw; and whether or not it’s possible to verify if someone has a photographic memory. Cronin and Salmon also had a brief argument about how to pronounce Lucie Hradecka’s last name. It sounded like a touchy subject.

As I was tuned in, play began again, but I quickly realized that I had no idea what was going on, because I was laughing at Matt as he speculated about what one of his co-hosts might look like “as a dominatrix.” It reminded me of an Australian writer I know who says that he loves to take long drives and listen to cricket on the radio, but that the best moments are when the commentators forget all about the game and just tell stories.

When the Roland Garros Radio commentators do talk tennis, it’s clear that they either know more about the players—on court, and, obviously, off-court—than their TV counterparts do, or they feel freer to say everything they know: Gossip is part of the game, too, even if many of us pretend not to be interested. I listened for a while as the Djokovic-Goffin match began, but the descriptions of the points were a few seconds ahead of what I was seeing on my TV, so I eventually tuned out. I’ll come back on the next rainy day.

Marion and the Dog

It’s hard when you realize that you don’t want to watch one of your favorite players. This spring I think I’ve begun to reach that stage with Alexandr Dolgopolov. He’s one of the most graceful shotmakers I’ve ever seen, but he’s never been a closer, and recently he’s been struggling to remain a winner at all. After peaking at No. 13 early last year, his ranking has slid to No. 24—I’m surprised it’s still that high—and he has seemed content this year to make the main draw of Masters events, possibly win a match, and move on.

Today, when I saw that Dolgo was playing Dimitry Tursunov, who has never been maestro on dirt, I thought he might win, but that he also might lose. It turned out to be the latter; Dolgo went out in straights—he lost two of the sets in 9-7 tiebreakers—to a guy ranked nearly 40 spots beneath him. Graceful play is always a joy to watch, but not when it’s accompanied by a growing sense of futility.

I did see my share of Marion Bartoli, however, and by the end of her obstinate three-set win over Olga Govortsova this afternoon, I had come to think of her as the anti-Dolgo. Was this a graceful match? No—that's never the first word that comes to mind when you watch Bartoli play. Did part of me, much like the French audience, want it to end so Djokovic and Goffin could begin? I cannot tell a lie—yes. But that doesn’t mean Bartoli isn’t a great competitor, and a great entertainer, in her own peculiarly touching way. Today, when she was confronted with a big point, she went for a big shot, and usually made it. When she was confronted with a 3-5 deficit in the third set and a home crowd that was trying to say au revoir, she clenched her fingers a little tighter, popped her eyes a little wider, and raised her fist a little higher. In spite of her countrymen, she won 7-5 in the third.

Put Marion Bartoli together with Alexandr Dolgopolov, and you’d have a heckuva tennis player. Though I’m not sure he’d work that well as her boyfriend.

Yankee Surge, or Mirage?

Is it worth noting that after three days, the United States has 14 players left in the singles draws? Probably not—at least one of them, Jamie Hampton, hasn’t played yet, and there’s a good chance that by the end of the week, with the exception of Serena Williams, they'll all be gone. Still, this isn’t a bad showing compared to recent French Opens, and Jack Sock, a 20-year-old Nebraska native, Chipotle lover, and Roland Garros rookie, really was impressive in his straight-set win over Spain’s Guillermo Garcia Lopez today.

The U.S. hasn’t had a men’s Grand Slam champion in 10 years. On the women’s side, Serena is like a visitor from a bygone era of glory, when No. 1 rankings and major championships felt like the rightful property of American tennis players.

This week, instead, the U.S. has celebrated numbers—the country has a lot of prospects and decent players making inroads here and there, without a lot of hope for a big breakthrough or a top ranking down the road. If that sounds a little like the way we've always described the tennis situation in France, so be it. It's probably as much as the U.S can aspire to at the moment.