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Old 05-16-2016, 04:40 PM   #354
Brian Swartz
Grizzled Veteran
 
Join Date: May 2006
2045 Roland Garros

Opening Rounds

Shreya Ujjaval is becoming an broken record. He lost just two games in an easy first-round match-up, then won only four against Iglar in the second round. It was better than last year though, when he fell in the first. The only early casualties were a couple of low seeds, except for Pavel Bestmianov, as the 21-seed dropped his first match in straight sets to Jens Petersen. That was the story of the first couple of days. The second round saw a couple more seeds fall, but nobody worth mentioning. Afanasy Bereznity had to rally from two sets down, but the 18-seed survived.

Frenchman Theodore Bourdet followed up an unexpectedly tough four-setter in the second round by rallying for a five-set win in his third-rounder ... he's not playing well but following the 'survive and advance' mantra. Federer gave Benda a surprisingly tough match, but the first big upset happened when No. 5 Pierce Gaskell was knocked out by fellow American Philip Carter. The fourth round played mostly to form, a lot of clean performances setting up some nice clashes to begin the second week. Anil Mehul dropped the first set but then rebounded to finish easily in four against Alberti, while Girish Girsh also went four for the first time against the in-form Agustin Herrera. Six of the top eight seeds moved through to the second week and there were no big surprises, though Thiago Herrera had a scare against Kinczllers, being pushed to five but eventually coming through.

Elsewhere ...

Prakash Mooljee did not get off to a good start, losing his first qualifying doubles match at tier-2 Nantes and then getting pushed to three sets by local wild-card Yves Brisson. Brisson is the typical poor-serving grinder, which on clay with the crowd behind you can be tough to counter. Mooljee got through it though, and did not have a competitive match the rest of the way. 2-seed Jonathon Ardant, another Frenchman, figured to be dangerous in the final but he went down hard, 6-1, 6-3. With this victory Mooljee sets a record for me in Challenger titles by a player(11) and also moves into the Top 50 for the first time. Even if he is just scalping tier-2 events during big tournaments -- and there's a lot more of that to come -- he's won four straight and continues to gradually improve.
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