The French Open gets underway today, with the glorious orange clay courts ready to see some action. Rafael Nadal - clay court supremo - is set to defend his title on the men's side, whilst Li Na (seeded seventh) comes back to try and win the trophy for the second year in a row. Top seed Djokovic will be on the lookout to try and stop Nadal, as will Roger Federer and Andy Murray. Li Na will have to be wary of Victoria Azarenka, Maria Sharapova, and Sam Stosur - who kicks things off on Day 1 playing Great Britain's Elena Baltacha.
Roland Garros Week 1
Published by Christine Blachford on
I have found coverage on my Eurosport app. They are discussing Sam Stosur.
yay! I am not sleeping because I decided to stream Mahut-Roddick instead :D
Mahut is up two sets to love, he's only one once before at the French Open and he's never beaten Roddick.
Goo Mahut! Poor Andy :(
Haven't kept up with tennis recently. I have to try and remember who I like and don't like again.
we like both of these two but we want Mahut to win ;)
Righto! :)
I have Kuz vs Tso now.
they were on my tv but I didn't care so much :(
I amy spoiled by the Australian Open where the red button gives me the choice of 4 courts
I recall liking Mr Tsonga before. He may or may not have been quite smiley. He's just taken the third set to go 2 up so he probably is quite smiley now.
ooh yes hes very very very smiley and we like him. I just figured he'd win very easily and I could see more of him in later rounds :)
Makes sense.
I am watching an American stream and they pronounce it Ma-hoot.
Tsonga has broken and held. He's making it look easy, like you said.
gooo jooooo
Roddick and Mahut have gone to 4. What is sleep.
Also through is Fernando Verdasco who has finally changed the horrific shirt he's been wearing since the Australian Open.
What colour?
I'm not entirely sure, I just saw him promising on twitter that he had new clothes.
His old one was fluro yellow and orange.
ahh my stream changed to frenchies speaking french so I am going to go to bed :)
Enjoy the rest of the tennis :D
Oh! Good ol' Wimbledon white :)
http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/ZQACybo6j9g/2012+Australian+Open+Day+1/4M9VpkOLTBC/Fernando+Verdasco it was 100x brighter in person too.
My eyes!
Next up, some poor person takes on Venus Williams.
I quite like Venus' dress.
When I said that poor person taken on Venus, I meant that poor person who broke Venus on her second service game.
Ms Ormaechea leads 5-2 now. I suppose I should learn her name if she's going to beat Venus.
First set to Ormaechea.
Venus may have picked up her game a little bit now. 5-0 in the second set.
Bit of a fight in the third set, but Venus got there in the end.
Yay, just noticed Tsonga went through!
The ladies world #1 is very close to losing in the first round.
she must have heard me because she just won 3 games in a row.
and she wins easily in the end.
I see Laura Robson lost in the first round. Such a fuss about her a year or two ago but it seems to have come to nothing.
I really do wonder about British tennis, I was talking about this last night after watching Stosur beat Baltacha.
Elena Baltacha has been the British #1 player pretty much consistently since 2002 but has never made any WTA level final, let alone won one. For a country with a massive organisation like the LTA that is always talking about developing tennis in the country and the worlds most prestigious tennis event in their backyard, they really aren't doing so great.
It says a lot that it was such a big deal for the British women to have three people in the second round of some other tournament. The second round isn't great, and I don't think anyone got past it!
even NZ's top woman is better than all the British ones. We don't have an Andy Murray though :D
Roger wins!
Novak time! Lots of pressure on him this time around.
Novak wins early too. I demand some first round upsets.
Who have we got left?
Murray still has to play as well, I think he's on court tomorrow
Ah ha. Let's hope he's not one of the upsets. Although... let's face it, he is always upset.
Oops, thinking about it, Nadal might be on tomorrow... I'm off on my days *checks*
He's allowed to be grumpy, he's british ;)
Sharapova just won her first match 6-0 6-0.
Nadal and Murray are in action later.
That's a pretty good start!!
Looks like Eurosport has two channels of tennis - Serena Williams or Wozniacki. Weellll, Wozniacki is wearing yellow so not her.
Well there goes Serena!
No way! I watched the boring half of the match, darnit!
Got better and better as it went on!
shocking news to wake up to!
Roger had match point in the third set but is now playing a fourth set, he must have known I was having a nap. Its nice to wake up in time to see him play :)
The other Williams just lost her first set. Not a happy pair of siblings so far this week!
Williams II is gone, after just an hour!
It's raining, so they have gone to Roger's match. Third set tie break. I may or may not know how this goes.
Oops, the comments closed and I forgot to open them again.
I see Murray had a tricky day but got there in the end.
Currently watching Isner, and it looks like an epic fifth set. Not that epic, of course. Although... 7-7 40-40.
He really is unfeasibly tall.
John isner is back to his old self by the looks of things!
It's madness!
At least we know who to blame now :)
What is going on now? They changed to new balls by mistake?
Lesson to all - if you're matched against him, bring a tent just in case :)
They're starting to show tiredness now. I vividly recall Isner lumbering about last time.
De ja vu!
you can't spell Matheiu without Mahut.
Hehehe!
I don't know if you saw any highlights of Murray today Christine but he had an odd old day. Not often you see someone looking incapable of serving and a set down in 40 minutes go on and dominate a match...
isner does look knackered.
3 break points out of a possible 22, oh my.
Hehe, Boris Becker.
"Can u believe it??? Its again Isner Mathieu 5set 14 13....they played the longest Match in Wimbledon"
"It was Mahut not Mathieu!!! My bad..."
"Think I should stick to football"
:)
I was reading updates via Twitter, it sounded stressful!
five and a half hours!!
i really don't know how he does this!
Awww, done at last!!
2 match points for mathieu!
wow, how slow is my stream? well done mathieu though!
Oops, sorry :)
they started their match when i was on my break at work. That is scary
No problemo! Now I know how Amy feels watching Eurovision streams ;)
Isner knows how it feels to lose the epic game now.
david tennant is so good at selling virgin media stuff he's making me want to buy virgin media even when we have virgin media
ooh, haas is still playing. or maybe not.
yay the comments are back :D
You have to tell me when they go away because I am stupid :)
I wasn't sure if it was deliberate so I thought I'd wait and see heheh.
I haven't watched any tennis yet tonight, oops!
when we reinvented live commenting, we thought about the longest event we could imagine commenting on and then set the comment box to automagically close the day afterwards. helps keep the spam out and makes our life easier etc.
that worked for a whole 3 months before y'all found something longer to comment on. have to do some coding rethinking on that one ;)
Yay for itv1 showing tennis all day again :)
djokovic v seppi just starting on itv1
novak has already broken seppi.
I like Novaks new clothes more than his old ones
he has a nice navy top :)
it looks a bit grey on my telly. But its still 100 million times better than his old silk pyjamas look, while constantly being dressed as a serbian flag.
that kids baguette looked tasty.
its all looking very grey in france today
we got a little montage of people slipping and falling at the start of our broadcast, it did amuse me :D
now that is quality broadcasting :)
I love their montages. Here's 2009s in gif form :D
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v17/slappysquirrell/tennisgifs/epicsmash.gif
those are sound bouncy rackets :D
ooh, seppi serving for the opening set.
I am going to my friends party on Saturday night while the womans final is on, but we've tweeted the bar and they've confirmed they can put the tennis on for us. I may turn it into a drinking game :D
Eurosport did an app update and now the thing doesn't work. I can't see no tennis. Boo.
boooo
Novaks making this hard for himself.
I haz tennis again! Who is the Sep chap?
Azarenka is out.
good, I didn't like her dress :D
Novak is 2 sets down now! unbelievable.
oooh nole. watching two channels at once is hard.
Not looking good!
maybe we'll lose both our #1 seeds today.
im putting my money on greg rusedski to win the french open now.
Come on Tim!
speaking of British folk, I wonder if the Royal Box at Wimbledon will be used during the Olympics.
well, novak's pulled a set back.
he did that pretty quickly
he neeeeeds to stop being unbeatable. upsets are fun.
meanwhile Roger is playing someone I've literally never heard of.
He's on a roll now.
Looking much more in control now. Stoopid awesome novak.
sorry, i appear to be going mad as roger is a set down to
He's so unknown his name disappeared
Roger, this man is NO ONE. WHAT ARE YOU DOING.
im telling you, rusedski for champion
its that time of the year again where i really want to play a tennis game now. Wonder if i still have grand slam tennis...
Ohh, not in real life, then.
No one else I know locally likes tennis/has a tennis racket :(
I do have one but tennis is a bit difficult with one person, and possibly very tiring
Unless you have a handy wall.
while I was going through all my ps3 discs to find the playtv one i came across virtua tennis so I've left it beside the TV, I know I'm going to give it a go before the week is out :D
I'll have to see if Argos sell any of those :)
Adam Hay Nicholls is at Roland Garros watching Nole but tweets "Don't ask me who's playing, I know nothing about tennis"
I don't care if tennis isn't your sport, its a very ignorant sports journalist to not know the #1 player in the world.
that's shocking. Makes me angry when people get vip access to stuff and know NOTHING about it
They've just shown a clip of Fed's match. The opponent looks about 12!
he was born in the 90s!
Roger, break him already
What's the score now?
4-4 in the second set
Ah ha. Similar story in this one.
2 set points to novak now. Can see him winning this one if he can break seppi here.
aaaand he does so. fifth set it is
Roger has finally broken and is serving for the set
Roger takes the set but had to go to deuce to do it. #owmyheart
no one wants to do anything easy today!
I'm finding it amusing that lots of my Melbourne friends are up and watching. They don't keep Amy hours, they're all struggling :D
they need to learn from the master :)
Roger and Nole are both stepping it up a bit now.
Nole would have to be really bad to mess up now but... stranger things have happened!
Seppi pulls a game back but I'd be amazed if nole didn't serve for the win
6-2 in the third for Roger. Quick quick quick.
Almost there!
novak wins. unlucky seppi
You're ahead of me this time :)
phew, i changed the channel about 2 seconds before he won that. good timing.
there will be a time where we are on sync, one day :)
tsonga should be on court next *stays firmly where he is*
ahh ITV are showing roger instead. Although i can't see it lasting much longer
i am watching azarenka lose
womens tennis confuses me. the rankings seem to contradict actual performances with people going out early and all sorts!
i imagine if you had a favourite it would make it soo much harder to watch. I like Serena but I am not gutted when she loses. And I love Kim but shes never around and shes already said its her last year.
isnt she re-retiring as well?
yep. shes said after the US Open but I'd be surprised if she even goes that far, I think she really just wants to play the Olympics.
finally they put roger on my telly, and its a set thats already finished.
I don't know what Foxtel have against broadcasting centre court, they seem to mostly show whats happening on court 2.
why am i watching 10 minutes of tsonga warming up, whyyyy
Hehehe, I was just watching people sitting around a table talking before realising I have a EuroSport 2 channel that probably wasn't people talking and was actually people playing. Hello Roger!
I don't have ITV4 so am sticking with mr federer too, can't see it being long until he wins now
federer wiiiiins
i demand my tv show me! maybe at the change of ends :(
"Lovely things come out of belgium, smooth chocolate, lovely beer, the smurfs, david goffin"
Again I suddenly realise I am listening to people talking instead of changing channels to see tennis. I can't cope with two channels! :)
right, i am going to retire from this match since I have an alarm set for about 4 hours time :D
why can't i have a long weekend too :(
yay tsonga :)
you made the effort to watch her, the queen should give you days off too!
night amy
we do have queens birthday next monday but i have to work :( i only get public holidays off if they fall in every state and for some reason australia has like 3 different queens birthdays between the states. so silly.
yes!! tsonga finally gets the second set.
Have set up a week 2 thread to go live at 7pm. Er, three minutes :)