The beauty of a tennis draw is how little certain players are protected.  Somehow, especially in sports like basketball, the top seed must be protected.  You’re the top seed!  You deserve every advantage you can get!  Is it not enough that you don’t have to play the second seed until the finals?  Must you play the worst seed every round?  And yet, fans somehow believe the top seed should get huge advantages like this!

Imagine how it must be on the other side.  To be a non-seed and playing a top seed.  Such is the life of Ryan Harrison.  At the Aussie Open, he had to play Andy Murray.  At the French, it was Gilles Simon.  At least, this go around, he played unseeded Yen-Hsun Lu in the opening round.  Sometimes the draw breaks so you don’t play a seeded player until around the fourth round, benefiting from an upset of a seed.  With 32 seeds, if seeding held form, a player would meet a seeded player by the second round.  Two seeded players can only meet, at the earliest, in the third round.

Ryan Harrison’s reward for reaching the second round was to play top seed, Novak Djokovic.  Harrison has weapons.  He has a big serve.  He can hit big groundies.  But he’s not steady enough to stay in it with the best players, nor is he very quick.  Harrison kept it close, but the most telling statistic was break points.  Harrison had 6 opportunities to break, including 0-40, but broke not at all.  Djokovic had 3 chances to break, and broke all 3 times.

Thus, a 64 64 64 win.

Roger Federer continued to have a smooth path.  He beat Fabio Fognini, 61 63 62.  Andy Roddick needed three close sets to beat Brit Jamie Baker.  Ryan Sweeting took the first set off Janko Tipsarevic, but the Serb won the next three sets. Richard Gasquet beat the top male Belgian, Rubens Bemelmans, in straight sets.  Ivo Karlovic took the third set in a tiebreak over Dudi Sela in a match delayed due to darkness.  He plays Andy Murray in the second round.

Milos Raonic finished a match called for darkness by serving out the match over Santiago Giraldo.  Jurgen Melzer, former top tenner, beat Stanislas Wawrinka, also a former top tenner, 8-6 in the fifth set.  Janowicz of Poland defeated the ever unpredictable, Ernests Gulbis, 97 in the fifth.  Gulbis had more aces, more winners, and comparable errors, but still could not get advantage.

Florian Mayer needed 5 sets to beat Philipp Petzschner in an all-German encounter.  David Ferrer won his match in three sets.  Viktor Troicki needed 5 sets to beat Klizan of Slovakia.

No big upsets of the day.  Tomorrow, fourth seed Andy Murray faces big serving Ivo Karlovic.  Nadal plays Lukas Rosol of the Czech Republic.