Betfair Official Blog

French Open update

The 2007 French Open got off to a damp start when their historic Sunday start was hit by rain. The weather will almost certainly his the tournament programme hard and force adjustments to the Monday schedule.

It will almost certainly mean Australian Open runner-up Fernando Gonzalez will be kicking his heels. He is the last scheduled match on Lenglen court on Sunday, when the fifth seed faces the tricky Czech number two Radek Stepanek.

Another big men's star forced to play a waiting game is Spain's Juan Carlos Ferrero. The 2003 champion and 2002 runner-up was also stuck in the locker room, waiting to face Amer Delic of the USA in a first encounter between the world number 20 and world number 69.

Twenty four matches were scheduled for the opening day, but with only one completed the organisers are facing an immediate mini-backlog.

Among the other big names waiting to get in on the action is Russia's Mikhail Youzhny. The 13th seed is the fourth and last match on court Number One against Czech Jan Hernych and will almost certainly be kept waiting until Monday.

Of course, the two big guns - two-time champion Rafael Nadal and Australian Open winner Roger Federer - are unaffected by Sunday's disruption as neither was due to play.
Top seed Federer, fresh from his win over Nadal at the Hamburg Masters last Sunday, will face American Michael Russell in the first round. He has never met the 29-year-old world number six.

Nadal has a trickier encounter against a clay-court specialist in Argentina's Juan Martin Del Potro.
However, you can't find anyone more at home on clay than Nadal, despite his record 81-match winning streak on the surface finally coming to an end in Hamburg against Federer.

He has met the 19-year-old De Potro just once, at the Miami Masters earlier this year, winning 6-0 6-4.
Betfair punters will be well aware that it will take a major upset to prevent a repeat of last year's final between Nadal and Federer, with the young Majorcan winning in four sets to retain his title.

But Federer, who is looking to capture the only major to elude him, could be on course to face Youzhny or Ferrero in the last 16. Of more concern to the Swiss world number one is the fact that he is in the same half as Guillermo Canas, the Argentina who beat him in Indian Wells and Miami.

Nadal is trading at 1.82 to make it a hat-trick of French titles, while Federer is 3.35 to win his first. Novak Djokovic heads the 'Winner without Nadal and Federer' market, trading at 5.