Well, Roland Garros has began and as expected Martina moved on to her second round today defeating Lisa Raymond pretty easily 6/2 6/2.
This is her first French Open since 2001. Previous to 2001 she was also at the French in 1997 and 1999. Reached the finals in both but lost to Eva Majoli in '97 and Steffi Graf in '99 and she lost to Jennifer Capriati in the semi's of 2001. As I've mentioned before this is the only grand slam title that eludes her.
As for this first match Martina seemed to have a lot of trouble with her serve, and didn't get a lot of first serves in. But the rest of her game was spot on.
Raymond really wasn't much of a threat, I didn't expect her to be. Martina seemed so relaxed out there, it was nice to see especially since I'm sure she had a lot of mixed emotions playing in the French.
Where she doesn't have good memories. If she was nervous or anything she certainly didn't show it and seemed very much in control. And the French crowds were curtious for once.
Martina seemed to have a good number of fans as well which was great to see.
A little funny thing that happened was apparently just after Martina came on court the wardrobe officials had a problem with a piece of apparel or logo or something on Martina's clothing, and she had to go and remove it.
I think maybe the French have regulations as to the size of the logo. I'm still unclear on what that was about, but it made the commentators Mary Carrillo, Dick Enberg and myself laugh. French officials are so darn picky lol.
So a fairly easy first round for Hingis, she made a few errors here and there but that's the thing with Martina her level of game rises with the opponent that she's playing so if she's playing someone who's giving her a challenge you hardly see her make any mistakes.
And that is what I'm hoping will happen as she goes on and the draw gets tougher. Next Hingis is playing some player named Zuzana Ondraskova whom I've never heard of I expect her to get through with no problems.
Things will start getting tough for her once she gets to quarter finals where she might have to face Kim Clijsters, after that might be Dementieva, Justine or Mauresmo.
There's also Venus Williams if she sticks around. But as in any tournament there are always upsets where the seeded players get knocked out by non-seeded ones so who knows. I will be very interested to see how it all plays out.
Here is a great article regarding the match from Yahoo Tennis
http://sports.yahoo.com/ten/news;_ylt=AkT7ikdXtO1SH5mRapkkDEM4v7YF?slug=ap-frenchopen&prov=ap&type=lgns
Above pics belong to the Martina Hingis Message board.
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