Perhaps the most peculiar match of Day 4 was the one between Gael Monfils and Fabio Fognini.  That the match needed to go to an extra day to get finished was a “shame on Gael” situation.  Gael Monfils was winning comfortably, up 2 sets to none.  His athleticism should have been enough to win.  Fognini wasn’t exactly considered a paragon of mental toughness, but then, Monfils has never had his act together.  It often seems like Monfils wants to show how talented he is and fool around instead of playing serious.

And so, even though Monfils had a break in the third set, two breaks up in the fourth set, he found himself mired in a fifth set, with daylight dimming (the French Open does not play under lights) and at 4-all, the supervisor wanted to call the match because of darkness.  Apparently, he asked both players if they wanted to continue and initially, both agreed.  But Team Fognini nixed the idea and then Fognini refused to play.  The chair umpire penalized him a point to get him to play.  Fognini was down 0-15 and even down break point before he pulled out the game.

Then, Monfils was cramping and went down 15-40 on his own serve, and the decision to play the match seemed foolhardy.  Fognini would get another match point but was unable to break.  At 5-all, they called the match because of darkness.

This match was concluded today, and Monfils apparently played quite passively letting Fognini control the match, and won this 9-7 in the fifth.  That’s again, one less potentially tough player that Federer has to play.  To be fair, Federer won over Monfils very easily.  Fognini claimed to have no hard feelings with Monfils who he considers a friend, having played against him since they were juniors.

Andy Murray also had his match called due to darkness Wednesday night.  He was up 3-2 with a break, but Chela broke back to 3-all, and the match was called due to darkness some 20 minutes before the Monfils-Fognini match.  Chela would come back and win the third set in a tiebreak, but Murray took sets 3 and 4 handily, 6-3 and 6-2.  Chela simply does not move well enough to challenge Murray.

Murray takes on Baghdatis next.  Baghdatis has given Murray trouble in the past although the two haven’t played in a while.  Baghdatis will probably be favored.  He’s got the kind of game that works well on slower as well as faster surfaces.  Baghdatis beat Marcel Granollers of Spain in four sets.  He had finished 3 sets yesterday and just needed one more today.  Murray, on the other hand, had finished one set and a half, and played 2 and a half sets, admittedly 2 of those sets being pretty easy.  Murray and Baghdatis play each other on Day 6 (tomorrow).

Andy Roddick found himself playing Blaz Kavcic, a qualifier from Slovenia.  This should have been a straight forward match, but clay is Roddick’s weakest surface and after the rain, clay tends to play really slow.  Roddick tends to be rock steady at about 70% first serves, but he was down a little at 65% (a number Murray would be thrilled at), and needed four sets to win over the qualifier.  Roddick takes on the big hitting Gabashvili.  He’ll hope that his steadiness outdoes the erratic Russian.

John Isner won a tough match over Swiss number 3, Marco Chiudinelli (a Federer childhood friend), in 4 long sets.  Isner has shown some mental toughness winning against clay courters.  His big serve and big forehand served him well.  Isner can now focus just on singles as his doubles partner, Sam Querrey, headed back to California, feeling burned out.

Two other matches were started but not completed: surprisingly, Andujar has split sets with Bellucci, the 24th seed.  Ljubicic and Mardy Fish have also split the first two sets.

Many of the matches were washed out.  Play didn’t start until about 3:30 PM about 4 hours later than its original scheduled time.  Nadal and Djokovic had their matches pushed to Friday.  Murray will also play on Friday against Baghdatis.  Federer, who has been pretty much on schedule, plays Julian Reister who beat Olivier Rochus to get to the 3rd round.  Rochus had beaten Djokovic back in Miami and had played doubles with Federer when they were juniors.  Reister, meanwhile, has not had great results.  However, he must be playing half-way decent to get to the third round.  However, it’s hard to imagine that Federer won’t steamroll over Reister.

Tomorrow, they will need to make up a fair number of matches.  This is one reason Federer, Nadal, Murray, and Djokovic are all scheduled to play.