Morning, all. Here's your daily gathering-place for tennis talk during play in Monte Carlo. As is usual when in Crisis Center mode, we ask that participants keep the talk focused on tennis while the matches are going on. After the day's play is over it's OK to go off-topic. We'll provide you with overflow Crisis Centers as needed.
Today's Order of Play can be found on this link. Whether we'll see as many upsets today as occurred yesterday is anybody's guess, but again the potential standard of the matchups is high. Ivo Karlovic and Nikolay Davydenko will face off today, second on Court 2, but it won't be televised. Incidentally, Davydenko leads their head-to-head 2-1, but Karlovic won their last match, which was on clay three years ago. On the Court des Princes the day commences with a maiden encounter between Simone Bolelli and Janko Tipsarevic, continues with a first-time meeting Gervasio Esteban David Ezequiel Nalbandian versus Marcel Granollers, and ends with a match between Marat Safin and Nicolas Lapentti (who haven't played each other for nine years - Safin narrowly won their only match to date).
Meanwhile Court Central hosts the tournament's biggest names. Fernando Verdasco begins against Philipp Kohlschreiber. Kohlschreiber leads the head-to-head 3-2, but Verdasco won in Indian Wells recently - however, he has never yet won a match in Monte Carlo in five previous visits to the tournament. This will be followed by a rerun of last year's Hamburg semifinal between Andreas Seppi and Roger Federer (advantage Federer, 4-0). Next Rafael Nadal takes on Juan Ignacio Chela (head-to-head 4-1 to Nadal), then Ivan Ljubicic tackles Juan Martin Del Potro for the first time.
How come so many of these players have never played each other before? OK, I know it's partly about how far some players typically go in their draws, but even so it's often surprising.
Enjoy today's tennis.
- Rosangel Valenti
[Update - as the site is getting heavy traffic with all the oohs and aahs for Mr Nadal, we'll take the weight off TypePad with this overflow - Andrew
Further update - as of around 1.30 am. EST, we've moved to using Overflow 3, linked below - Andrew].