Roland Garros

Dinara Safina advanced to the second round of Roland Garros, which started yesterday. Unfortunately, this victory means the elimination of Vera Zvonareva, who lost to her, from the competition. The main event of the first gaming day of the tournament was the unconvincing performance of the world's best tennis player Roger Federer.

The current Roland Garros has already gone down in history. For the first time in the entire history of not only this tournament, but Grand Slam competitions in general, the championship starts on Sunday - a day earlier than scheduled. The organizers took this step, which was very controversially received by the tennis players, hoping that by taking another day off, they would increase the attendance of the tournament and the ratings of television broadcasts. However, only 12 matches were played. So the real start will take place only today. Today, by the way, Nikolai Davydenko will also play, who on Saturday chalked up another victory in the ATP tournament: in the final of the competition in Pertschach, Austria, the Russian tennis player defeated Romanian Andrei Pavel.

Roger Federer was the most indignant among those dissatisfied with the postponement of the start of the tournament yesterday. “I told the organizers and generally everyone who would listen that I didn’t want to play on Sunday. I asked to move my first match to Monday. But this is a Grand Slam tournament. At such competitions they don’t listen too much to the opinions of tennis players. Which is a pity. In any case If this happens, I now run the risk of losing my rhythm. After all, my next match is only scheduled for Wednesday. I don’t need a two-day break at all,” said the Swiss.

But no matter what Federer said, he had to beat Argentinean Diego Hartfield quickly. Even the fact that Federer knew absolutely nothing about the 156th ranking number (this is not surprising, given that the Argentine has never in his career met a player ranked higher than 95th), which he himself admitted shortly before the match, does not explain what happened on the court.

It was as if they forgot to warn Federer that the match had already begun. And by the time it dawned on him, he had already lost three games in a row. Moreover, two of them are on their own feed. After that, the Swiss gradually began to come to his senses, but it seemed that it was too late - Hartfield, leading 5:3, came close to winning the opening set. But at the decisive moment the Argentine faltered. He simply gave the ninth game to Federer, making four unforced errors at once, and then allowed his opponent to make another, decisive break.

However, even in the second set, even if one wanted to, it was impossible to recognize the best tennis player in the world in one of the participants in the match. Federer continued to stall, making one mistake after another. The Argentine might have capitulated, but Federer constantly revived his hope for a miracle until it came to a tiebreaker. That's when the public saw the real leader of world tennis. Federer, having delivered a series of surprisingly accurate shots right to the line, won the second set, which, as it turned out a little later, broke his opponent. Hartfield, however, was not very upset. “I’ll ask you to give me a video recording of this game. I’ll watch it at my leisure,” said the athlete.

Federer almost had to apologize for his inexpressive play. “It was a bad match, to be honest. But I still won. I’ll try to unwind now. Maybe I’ll take a walk around the city and prepare better for the next match.”

The draw, as has become customary, brought together Russian tennis players at an early stage of the tournament. It’s not surprising, considering that there were 15 of them in the main draw at once. Dinara Safina and Vera Zvonareva had to play against each other.

For Safina, Roland Garros can hardly be considered one of her favorite competitions. As a matter of fact, in Paris until yesterday she managed to win only two matches and lose the same number, being eliminated in the first round in 2003 and 2005. But this year Safina is playing much more confidently. Take, for example, her reaching the final of the first category tournament in Rome.

At the beginning of the match, Dinara Safina completely controlled the game and easily took the lead with a score of 3:0. However, as it turned out later, in this match the break meant almost nothing - the opponents took games on someone else’s serve ten times.

Vera Zvonareva, as if nothing special had happened and it was common for her to start a match with a failure, leveled the score surprisingly easily. But then her game quickly fell apart.

In general, it is difficult to say which of the Russian tennis players was more worthy of victory in this confrontation. According to some statistical indicators, Zvonarev is even better. For example, she made 29 unforced errors, and Safina made 35. The picture is similar with doubles - two against four.

In the second game, Vera Zvonareva was the first to break her opponent’s serve, but, as already mentioned, the breaks did not have a decisive influence on the course of the match. Safina, especially in the end, was a little stronger and more accurate.

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