Roland Garros - Week 1 Thoughts

American Men
The first few days of the 2007 French Open were dominated by rain and if you were an American male tennis player, you probably wished the rain had never stopped. Not a single American man was able to advance beyond the first round, including the world's number 3 player Andy Roddick, in an amazing display of incompetence on clay. American struggles at Roland Garros have been well chronicled over the years, but typically the discussion has focused on the difficulty of winning the tournament, not of winning a match.

With the rise of Spanish tennis in the 1990's, the Spaniards were criticized for specializing on clay and giving little attention to their games on the faster surfaces. Some Spanish players and other clay court specialists would show up at Wimbledon with absolutely no preparation and would make a quick exit. Under those circumstances, the question was why even play the tournament if you don't prepare? It was a good question and it is one that the Spanish, as well as other European and South American players, have answered quite well. Not only have they continued to be the dominant force on clay, they have become contenders on all other surfaces and have emerged as the new powers in tennis. In Spain, hard courts and grass courts were built to help train their players on the other Grand Slam surfaces, and the results have begun to follow. Spaniards Carlos Moya, Juan Carlos Ferrero, Rafael Nadal, and South Americans David Nalbandian, Fernando Gonzalez and Marcelo Rios have all been finalists at non-clay Grand Slams since 1997.

Now the shoe is on the other foot and it's time for American tennis to decide if it wants to address its woes on clay. It will require a tennis culture change as hard courts in the US are being built to play faster and faster, and power is taught as the main component of the game. Until more clay courts are built in the US for junior players to train on, the trend of ineptitude on clay for the American men will in all likelihood continue.

Other Thoughts
Once again, Ivan Ljubicic has lived up to his billing as Grand Slam underachiever, this time with a third round loss to Italian Filippo Volandri. In the first 2 majors of the year, the number 7 player in the world has won just 2 matches, both in Paris.

Although the big story in the US has been the misfortunes of the American men, there are also no French men remaining as Week 2 begins. Of the four host nations of the Grand Slams, only Australia has a male player remaining in the event, Lleyton Hewitt, and he is not typically considered a great clay court player. This is just another indication of how the once traditional powers in tennis have lost their dominance.

With three of the most exciting players in the game today, there's an outside chance that the men's and women's champions could come from Serbia. Novak Djokovic, Jelena Jankovic and Ana Ivanovic are all still in the mix and each of them has a good opportunity to advance further.

The continuing demise of Venus Williams was on full display in Paris in the first week of Roland Garros. While her three set loss to Jelena Jankovic was certainly respectable, Venus continues to ignore the mechanical flaws in her own game while at the same time seems unable to ever give her opponents any credit. It is always about how she played poorly, or in the case of the Jankovic match, how she over-trained for the event and that made her tired in the final set. Apparently, it had nothing to do with the fact that she has only played 6 tournaments this year compared to the 14 that Jankovic has played.