French Open: Second Round Report

Rain caused havoc in the schedule of play forcing the tournament directors to extend some second round matches into a third day. Despite an almost wash-out on Thursday, all of the second round matches were completed by Friday due to good weather.

The seeds in the men's side held strong with dominant showings from top ten players Robin Soderling (5th seed), Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (8th seed), and David Ferrer (9th seed). Combining their second round results, they only lost 11 games! 6th seed Andy Roddick, 17th seed John Isner, and unseeded Robby Ginepri show Americans can play on clay by moving on to the third round. Another American, Mardy Fish, was this close to joining his compatriots. Instead he lost 8-10 in the fifth and final set to veteran and 14th seed Ivan Ljubicic.

Speaking of fifth sets, 28th seed Lleyton Hewitt was able to grind out a win in a match that had a rollercoaster quality of up and down. The scoreline was 1-6, 6-3, 6-4, 2-6, 6-2. Fifth setters were less kind to 13th seed Gael Monfils who ended up losing to Fabio Fognini 7-9 in the fifth set. Their match lasted two days, rescheduled due to "insufficient light," which according to reports, was an understatement. They resumed their match 5-5 in the fifth set on Friday. Other seeds that fell in the second round were Fernando Gonzalez (12) and Guillermo Garcia-Lopez (32).

For the women, it was business as usual as favorites such as Serena Williams, Venus Williams, and Justine Henin cruised to the next round. After upsetting Dinara Safina in the first round, 39-year-old Kimiko Date Krumm was unable to extend her Cinderella run losing to Jarmila Groth of Australia 0-6, 3-6. This score is a bit of a mirror image of the beating that 28th seed Alisa Kleybanova delivered to former French Open champion Ana Ivanovic.

Another former French Open champion, last year's champion, 6th seed Svetlana Kuznetsova was this close to getting ousted. Her opponent, Andrea Petkovic, had four match points, but got tight and was unable to capitalize on what certainly would've been one of the biggest wins of her career. These seeded players weren't as lucky as Kuznetsova: Agnieszka Radwanska (8), Vera Zvonareva (21), Lucie Safarova (24), and Jie Zheng (25).