Because of the Sunday start, the French Open’s first round lasts 3 days.  Wimbledon typically moves at a faster clip so they can give the middle Sunday as a break.

Let’s take a look at the seeds that have fallen.  The top seed to lose was last year’s semifinalist, Tomas Berdych.  Although this is surprising, it’s his performance last year that was even more surprising.  Everyone knows Berdych is talented but erratic.  He had the power to play well, but he can play erratically.  If you look at his results leading up the French, they were good, but not great.  He made the quarterfinals of the clay events, but couldn’t push his way to the semifinals.

This first round loss was more surprising, admittedly, but Berdych tends to lose to players ranked lower than him.  His mobility can be an issue.  Robert was able to hit hard shots that forced Berdych to play more defensively than he wanted.  It didn’t help that his first serve percentage dropped from a very respectable 76% to the 50s and that was enough for Robert to take advantage.

The next highest seed to go was Marin Cilic.  Cilic has also been struggling for a while now.  He was playing well about a year and a half ago.  He lost to Ramirez-Hidalgo in straight sets.  Cilic doesn’t play well on either clay or grass preferring the hard courts.  For some reason, he’s faded some, so his loss, while an upset, isn’t hugely surprising.

Michael Llodra lost to Belgian, Steve Darcis.  While a bit of an upset, Llodra is a serve and volleyer trying to win on clay.  It’s no surprise that France almost never contests a Davis Cup tie on clay.  They are simply better on hard courts.  The only way they’d play on clay is against the US who is even worse on clay.  In general, a seed below 16 losing in the first round is bound to happen.  It’s surprising that the seeding has held up that well for the bottom half of the seeds.

The last seed to lose in the opening round was Milos Raonic.  Raonic did OK on clay, but the big server is better on hard courts.  He had a blistering start to the year, reaching the fourth round of Australia, then winning San Jose, and was runner up in Memphis.  Everyone was saying he was the next great Canadian player which is amusing because it’s hard to name the last great Canadian player.

It should have been a warning sign that Raonic was in his early 20s.  Prodigies tend to break through around 17 or 18.  Occasionally, you have a player like Soderling who was stuck in the 20s, that broke through to the top ten, around the age of 24 or 25.  Or you have the even more unusual Jurgen Melzer who was ranked 40 most of his career, then leapt up to the top ten for a period of time, who is as old as Federer.

How are the seeds doing?  Djokovic looked pretty solid against a solid player, de Bakker.  For all the complaints about the balls, the pros still know how to hit them near the lines.  Djokovic is still looking like the man to beat.  Federer looked reasonably good.  As usual, return is not his strong suit.  Federer appears to steady out his game for the Slams and not go for wild shots as much.  He was engaged in longer rallies with Lopez.  He figured the slower surface would hurt Lopez who couldn’t win as many easy points as he did in Madrid.

With Raonic’s loss, Murray’s section of the draw, which was pretty light to begin with, looks good to the fourth round where he might meet Dolgopolov.  If he can play the kind of tennis he’s played in the clay season so far, he should be able to reach the fourth round without too much trouble.  To be fair, clay is his weakest surface and he plays more up and down than the other top 4, but he’s had about as nice a draw as you can expect.

Nadal is likely to have a few close sets against big serving John Isner, but the results should be similar to del Potro’s beating of Karlovic.  Isner might take a set, but I think Nadal is playing too well otherwise.  Isner hits better off the ground than Karlovic and runs better, but he’s slower than Soderling and his serve isn’t as threatening as Karlovic.  Expect 3 close sets, depending how well Isner serves.

To me, Gasquet is the player to watch for, but his draw isn’t that easy.  He plays Spaniard Granollers next, and may end up playing Bellucci, the player that reached the semis of Madrid and nearly beat Djokovic.  All these players are in Djokovic’s section of the draw, but only one of them can meet Djokovic, so while that section of the draw is tough, it’s tough in Gasquet’s section.  Djokovic has a tough draw too, so if he wins the French, he’ll have earned it.

Gulbis continues to disappoint.  I suppose it’s good he didn’t do that well in the lead up as he did last year when he took a set off Nadal, but still ended up losing in the French in the first round due to injury.  Since then, he has been erractic.  He’s a bit like Berdych without the good results that Berdych has had.  He’s becoming a bit of a wasted talent.

So far, the upsets while upsetting have been of players that have seen better days.  Players that should win are winning and even a few iffy players have still won their first round matches.

Perhaps Day 3 will bring some surprises.