Tennis Tuesday: Roland Garros Week 1

After a rainy start, we made it through the 1st round of Roland Garros!  Here’s what you might have missed.

Roland Garros 101
Where to watch:  Tennis Channel and Tennis Channel Plus, NBC
Main draw play runs daily through the finals on Sunday, June 5th.
Social Media: #RG16 @rolandgarros

Murray, Wawrinka Survive Scares
Both Andy Murray and defending champ Stan Wawrinka were pushed to 5 sets in their opening round matches.  Murray’s 37-year-old opponent Radek Stepanek, who made it through qualifying, was impressive but couldn’t cross the finish line.  If Wawrinka had lost, it would have been the 1st time the defending champion lost in the 1st round at Roland Garros.

View this post on Instagram

Matchy matchy #RG16

A post shared by Roland-Garros (@rolandgarros) on

 

Seeds Out In Round 1
Marin Cilic, Fabio Fognini, Kevin Anderson, Phillip Kohlschreiber, and Stevie Johnson all lost their opening round matches.   And while he’s not seeded at this tournament, another disappointing loss from Grigor Dimitrov to Victor Troicki in 5 sets.

Nadal Off To Winning Start
Rafa was impressive in his defeat of Australian Sam Groth 6-1, 6-1, 6-1, in just 80 minutes.  And he just casually hit this tweener winner.

2nd Round Matches To Watch
We’re looking forward to Jack Sock vs Dustin Brown and Borna Coric vs Bernard Tomic.

View this post on Instagram

Raw emotion. #RG16

A post shared by Roland-Garros (@rolandgarros) on

 

#Merica Status Update
Jack Sock, John Isner and Bjorn Frantangelo all advanced to the 2nd round.   Stevie Johnson, Sam Querrey, Taylor Fritz, Brian Baker are all out of singles action.

Roof Coming in 2020
With the US Open debuting its completed roof over Arthur Ashe Stadium this year, Roland Garros will be the only slam without a roof.  Not for much longer!  Tournament directors announced they will have a roof on Court Philippe Chatrier by 2020.  While this is great for rain delays, how about some stadium lights so players don’t have to stop when it gets dark? (while rain is frequent, it does get dark every single night…)

Doubles Action Starts Wednesday
There are lots of doubles matches on the schedule for Wednesday, including reigning US Open champs and hometeam Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut.  Mahut has a chance of reaching the #1 ranking in doubles during Roland Garros.  #ALLEZ  Other pairs to watch include the Bryan Brothers, who just won the title in Rome, and Steve Johnson and Sam Querrey, who just won their 1st title as a team in Geneva.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s