Hi everyone. Main draw play started in Monte Carlo yesterday, but today is the first day of TV coverage. Yes, this is the tournament during which most of us have always found it difficult to see the balls in motion; last year I found myself continually fiddling with the picture controls on the TV to try to get them to appear sharper. When visiting the tournament in person, the issue became obvious - the TV cameras are pointed at the court from the clubhouse, and there's no suitable platform at a lower level, so the camera angle is a steeper than the ideal.
You'll find today's Order of Play on this link.
Today's photo was taken yesterday in front of Monaco's Royal Palace - Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal gave a mini-exhibition in the presence of Prince Albert. I was looking for more of a scoop here, but If the new Mr and Mrs Federer have arrived in Monte Carlo by this stage, apparently they haven't yet been caught on camera.
As always, please keep your comments focused upon tennis until the day's play is over, after which it's OK to drift mildly off-topic. If we find that it's necessary, we'll put up overflow posts if TypePad starts to slow down at the 4 to 5 page mark.
Enjoy today's tennis - and good luck with tracking those elusive balls!
- Rosangel Valenti
[Note: as of around 6 a.m. EST, I'm opening today's Overflow post early, and am asking you to move over there to continue discussing today's tennis. A bug within TypePad has prevented us from immediately switching off pre-moderation within TW itself, but it's not enabled on our Overflow blog, which you won't find linked from the tennis.com front page. The link you need to follow is just below, in blue
Further note: as of around 18.20 p.m. EST, comments on this post have been reopened, subject to pre-moderation, thanks to our nuisance poster].