Roman Follies

The weather behaved today, and the tournament was able to complete all of its singles matches. Three first-round matches had to be played in the afternoon, and the winners had to play again in the evening. The completion of matches was not good news for some of the seeded players. Five seeds were sent home, and some received scares.

Paul-Henri Mathieu defeated last week’s Barcelona Open’s finalist. This is one of the first-round matches that was not completed yesterday. Mathieu upset the eleventh-seed David Ferrer 6-3 2-6 6-2 in their first-round match.

The veteran Frenchman turned around in his second-round match and was upset by German qualifier Mischa Zverev 3-6 7-6(5) 6-0. The 21-year-old already denied Juan Carlos Ferrero in the qualifying rounds and beat Tomas Berdych in the first round. He is probably this tournament's troublemaker.

Jurgen Melzer upset seventh-seed Nikolay Davydenko. Davydenko had played well last week in Barcelona, but Melzer dismantled the Russian 7-5 7-6(5). The Austrian will now play Fernando Gonzalez, who is playing well and coasted through his match.

Richard Gasquet took out ninth-seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in his first-round match. He and Radek Stepanek were able to win their first-round matches in the afternoon and then won their second-round matches in the evening. Gasquet then beat Ernest Gulbis in his second-round match after the Latvian rallied to get back into the match.

The Frenchman now advances to play Fernando Verdasco. Gasquet leads in their head-to-head matchup 4-2. Verdasco has won their last two meetings, but Gasquet has won all of their meetings on clay. The Frenchman played solidly today but has played a lot of tennis with the two matches. He may not have enough left in the tank to withstand the Spanish onslaught.

Gilles Simon, Juan Martin del Potro and Fernando Verdasco had scares, but all got it together enough to advance into the next round. Simon beat Italian Fabio Fognini in front of his hometown crowd.

Old faithfuls Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer won their respective matches quite easily. Nadal will play Robin Soderling in the next round. The two have not played since their infamous match at Wimbledon in 2007. Federer will play the Radek Stepanek in the next round. The Swiss leads 7-2 in their head-to-head matchup. The last time Stepanek beat Federer was last year in this very tournament.

With all the upsets in Federer’s quarter, he is almost guaranteed a spot in the semifinals. Gilles Simon is his only obstacle in the quarterfinals if the Frenchman can get past the German troublemaker Zverev in the third round. Simon will have to raise his level of play to stay undefeated against the Swiss.

(Images: AP, Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images)