As an aside, Essential Tennis Tour News currently focuses on the men’s professional tour. As popularity increases, there will be efforts to include the women’s tour as well.

Now to Day 2.

Today, Rafael Nadal opened up his defense of Roland Garros against Marcos Daniel of Brazil. It’s easy to assume that some unknown player, such as Daniel, just joined the tour. However, Daniel turned pro in 1997 and will turn 31 this year.

To step back a moment, think of what it must take for Daniel to be entering his 12th year on the tour, never having achieved the dizzying heights of players like Santoro or Wawrinka, let alone a player that might go down as the greatest of all time, Rafael Nadal.

A player like Daniel needs to do well enough (stay in the top 100) so he earns enough money to offset the expense of traveling around the world. These toilers of the tour, working in obscurity, show just how stellar the play of the top champions are.

Back to the match itself. Daniel plays with a one-handed backhand which means he’s vulnerable to Nadal’s high loopy shots to Daniel’s backhand.

Despite a lowly ranking and the sheer dominance of Nadal on this surface, Daniel kept the match somewhat close for about two sets. Daniel was down 5-4 and broke back to 5-all in the first set only to lose the set 7-5. He proceeded to lose the next two sets, 6-4 and 6-3.

Other players had easy wins today. Davydenko beat Koubek: 2, 1, and 4. Watch out for the veteran Davydenko, who plays well on clay. Despite losing the number 4 ranking some time ago, he can still play well on the surface.

Gonzalez beat Vanek of the Czech Republic, 3, 2, and 3. Gonzalez is in Andy Murray’s section of the draw. Hard serving Robin Soderling had a tight match with American, Kevin Kim, but still won in straight sets: 7-6(4), 7-6(4), 6-2.

Two Nicolas’s had tough wins today. Olympic gold medalst, Nicolas Massu, of Chile won in five sets, 6-3, 6-4, 1-6, 2-6, 6-3 over Daniel Kollerer of Austria. Kollerer is 25 years old and ranked 77 in the world. Veteran Nicolas Kiefer of Germany beat Serbian Ilia Bozoljac: 7-6(4), 3-6, 7-5, 6-4. Bozoljac is 23 years old and ranked 131.

Not every Nicolas won today. The tough match of the day belonged to 17th seed, Stanislas Wawrinka. He needed five sets to beat Frenchman, Nicolas Devilder. 6-3, 5-7, 2-6, 6-4, 6-4.
Devilder is 29 years old and ranked 60. Wawrinka had given Nadal a tough match back in Miami, but has lost twice to del Potro on clay. Ranked 18th, he has fallen from a high rank of 9 from last year. It’s not good to open a first round match with such a tough win.

Like Rafa Nadal, Roger Federer opened up his match with a veteran, Alberto Martin, of Spain. Despite the straight set win, 6-4, 6-3, 6-2, Federer struggled early on. He got broken early but broke back quickly. Martin was able to hang in with Roger in the early parts of the matches. Federer did not look as sharp as he did playing in Madrid. He was back to shanking shots and missing shots wildly. It felt like he was experimenting with shots that he would need later in the tournament.

It probably didn’t bother Federer that he was mis-timing shots since he was winning games rather handily. Roger did improve his ball striking as the match went along. It goes to show, even a player like Martin, who has never been ranked about 30 in his career, can still have shots that can bother Roger, even if he can’t do it consistently.

Currently, Feliciano Lopez is struggling to win his match, already down two sets to one. Tipsarevic has won two tiebreak sets to go up two sets to one against Spaniard, Alberto Montanes.

More results on Day 2 later on.