Most players on the tour aren’t the glamor players, the players who contend for a title, the names you see in draws every day.  They aren’t Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal.  They aren’t even Juan Monaco or Thomas Bellucci who routinely make the main draws of ATP events.

Instead, they are like Daniel Brands of Germany.  They mostly play challengers.  At that level, hovering around 100 in the ranking, they occasionally play the big event.  Brands is unusual in one way.  He’s only 22.  Many of the players in the draw that you’ve never heard of are older players, often those much closer to 30 and 20.  These veterans have played on the tour for years and managed to survive.

Brands had a big opportunity today.  With his big first serve and big forehand, he had Tsonga worried.  He took the first set 6-4.  Tsonga recovered to take the next 2 sets 6-3, then 6-2.  Brands came back to take the fourth set in a tiebreak, 7-6, and the two played pretty even in the fifth with a break each.  At 5-4 up, Tsonga had a match point on Brands serve.  Brands held serve and Tsonga held again.  Tsonga then was down 40-15 on Brands serve but got to deuce and got a few more match points and finally won when Brands hit a bad topspin backhand.  Clearly, the backhand is Brands weakness, often having to slice it.  He can hit topspin, but he can’t seem to control its depth.

Ernests Gulbis started off with a tough draw facing Julien Benneteau.  Benneteau literally just missed the cutoff for being a seed.  Garcia-Lopez, ranked 38, just got the 32nd seed and Benneteau, ranked 39, did not.  Even so, Gulbis found himself in trouble.  He got down an early break, but then broke back, but then got broken again.  He lost the first set, 6-4.  In the second set, he sought medical treatment for his hamstring.  Gulbis was down two breaks in the second, lost it 6-2.  At 1-0 down in the third, Gulbis retired.

Gulbis, alas, chose a bad time to get hurt.  Part of the issue may have been going down a set early.  Tsonga was not feeling well and had asked for a delay in his first round match, but was denied the request.

Fognini won his match in five sets over Chilean veteran, Nicolas Massu, in five sets.    Tobias Kamke of Germany beat the higher ranked Robert Stephane in a match of two low-ranked players.  Such a match would not occur in anything besides the Slams because Slams have 128 draw and most events have between 32 and 48 players.

So a player like Brands, who has an opportunity to beat a player like Tsonga, has to feel that he let a rare chance slip through his fingers.  It’s also like deja vu all over again.  Brands lost last year at the French in the first round in five sets, although to an opponent he had a chance over, American Robert Kendrick.  Interestingly, Brands beat Alejandro Falla in the first round of qualifying last year.  He just beat Janko Tipsarevic and is likely to meet Roger Federer in the 2nd round.

Garcia-Lopez beat veteran Rainer Schuettler in straight sets.  Somdev Devvarman, two time NCAA men’s singles champ, qualified and played Marco Chiudinelli of Switzerland.  This was the battle of the 6-3 sets.  Every set went 6-3.  Chiudinelli won sets 1, 3, and 5 by that score, and Devvarman took sets 2 and 4.

Tomorrow, Roger Federer is the second match on the main court.  Monfils plays Mayer of Germany in the fourth match on the court.

On Suzanne Lenglen court, Djokovic opens against Korolev in the 2nd match of the day.   Murray plays Gasquet in the following match.

Wawrinka, Bellucci, Gonzalez, Ljubicic, Baghdatis, Hanescu, Isner, Lopez, Almagro, Berdych, and Robredo are other seeded players playing tomorrow.