What a day at the Roland Garros!
Djokovic – Seppi 4-6, 6-7 (5), 6-3, 7-5, 6-3
Incredible match here. The Serb was not at his best and Seppi took advantage of it. The Italian was in full control of his own shots and he had no problems at all to trade long rallies with Nole that couldn’t find his usual deadly rhythm. So Andreas suprised everybody to win the first 2 sets playing a very solid tennis. As expected, the Italian “relaxed” in the third set when he had the advantage to be the first one to serve. In order to increase his chances to win the match, Andreas had to hold his serve for the first 3-4 games to put Nole in a very unconfortable situation. But the Serb immediately fought back to break the Italian twice and win the third set 6-3. The forth set was another close encounter with Djokovic getting the decisive break at the 12th game to cruise in the decider.
Nole ended the match with an astonishing 81 unforced errors (the same amount of unforced errors commited in all the previous 3 matches). “One of those days where … nothing is working,” Djokovic said. “I could not get into the rhythm.”
“Maybe I could have started the third set better. I could have done a little more there,” Seppi commented. “But he returns very well, and gets serves back almost always, which makes things difficult.”
Federer – Goffin 5-7, 7-5, 6-2, 6-4
Great day for the Belgian that managed to win a set with his idol and was close to get an improbable 2-0 set lead. Ranked 109 in the world, Goffin was a lucky loser. That means that he did not qualify for the tournament, but he got n the main draw because somebody else withdrew. The 21 years old suprosed everybody beating Stepanek, Clement and Kubot.
The Belgian had also a dream start with Roger winning the first set and bringing is tennis idol to a tricky 5-5 in the second. The the youngster melted to lose his service game and allow Federer to win the 2nd set. From that moment it was a sort of game over with Roger winning comfortably the 3rd and the 4th set.
“Yes, of course, he can be a champion. It takes weeks of hard labour but I was impressed by the way he plays,” commented Federer.
“It’s nice to see someone do it at a grand slam again for a change because back in the day we were used to seeing Becker winning Wimbledon, Chang winning the French Open at very young ages. It just doesn’t happen so often anymore.
“I still haven’t seen him enough. I wish he comes through. He’s very talented and I hope he can make it to the top 20. That would be great.”
“He’s got great potential in terms of his touch and the way he reads the game. He moves well, takes a backhand early and absorbs pace really well from the baseline.”
“It was a very nice match. I was tired by the end because I have played a lot of matches at this tournament,” commented Goffin. But I have no regrets, I gave it all I could. It was a great moment which I will never forget, but I hope to have more moments like it.”
The Belgian will be ranked world nr. 68.
OTHER MATCHES
The other two matches could not be completed due to the darkness.
Tsonga ans Wawrinka were playing a very tough match when the score was 6-4 7-6 3-6 3-6 4-2 for the Frenchman.
Berdych – Del Potro match was stopped when the Argentine was winning 7-6 1-6 6-3 .
