Well, it looks like Novak Djokovic, the No. 2 seed at the Fench Open and the dude surfing on a 41-match winning streak, will have to play a best-of-three clay-court match with Juan Martin del Potro to determine which man advances to the fourth round—and to determine whether Djokovic will continue to have a shot at shattering John McEnroe's record winning streak of 42 matches to start a year.
It's kind of crazy, how in tennis the consensus match-of-the-day (and in this case, the expression hardly does the pairing justice) can end up not happening—or, as in this case, half-happening, simply because the game isn't played under a clock. IMO, the promoters ought to have been aware of this possibility, and scheduled the match earlier in the the day.
Fans who were lusting to see the much-hyped Djokovic vs. del Potro had to sit through a long, long prelude and didn't even get what they came for. And it isn't like this was one of those one-off days when everything more or less breaks the wrong way to screw up the schedule (that's usually a combination of multiple, unexpectedly long matches and weather).
Did it never occcur to the tournament director that Stan Wawrinka and and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga could go four hours? Hail, the odds that it would go that long were better than the odds on it being over in 120 minutes.
This was not just a big faux pas, it also benefits del Potro, who's still trying to find his competitive form and stamina after missing most of last year. I wrote yesterday that the odds favored Djokovic if he could turn the match into a debilitating war, and the longer the match went on the more it would help the Serbian star. That potential advantage is now in ruins, and the odds of del Potro halting Djokovic's streak this morning are much better than they were yesterday morning.
The next most interesting match to me on the ATP side is the clash between Mardy Fish and Gilles Simon. The most compelling WTA pairing is the Andrea Petkovic vs. Jarmila Gajdosova clash.
The matches I can just soon miss? Maria Kirilenko vs. Arantxa Rus and Lukasz Kubot vs. Alejandro Falla.
-- Pete