This is day 2 of my visit to Roland Garros and I managed to see the whole match of Polona Hercog of Slovenia and Aravane Rezai of France.

Polona used different spins, slices, speeds and heights to disturb the rhythm of Aravane Rezai in the first set but then Rezai got used to this game and simply overpowered Polona.

Polona has a some great weapons; her kick serve is very effective on clay, her forehand is versatile, controlled and quite fast, and she is one of the few girls on the tour that plays backhand slice really well.

Her top spin backhand is not that good for this level of tennis and it will be exploited over and over again if she plays top 50 WTA players.

Polona has almost no chance of getting into top 50 if she keeps playing with such two-handed backhand – which often lands short, has no bite and Polona doesn’t trust it.

Aravane Rezai on the other hand has not much more than two powerful groundstrokes with which she aggressively attacks, attacks and attacks.

Rezai eventually won 3-6, 6-4, 6-2 and Polona will definitely learn from this defeat. I hope she improves her behaviour too because she didn’t look like champion when she was losing.

Some other matches and players I watched today…

Maria Sharapova – Nadya Petrova 6-2, 1-6, 8-6

The battle of big hitters. I watched the final set and Maria and Nadya played excellent tennis. There were many winners from both sides and every ball that was lifted a little bit higher in order to gain some time was immediately punished.

Both girls also served very well and there were aces flying around as if this was a men’s match. This match could have gone either way so I cannot really say that Maria was the better player. Better luck next time for Petrova.

Rafael Nadal – Teimuraz Gabashvili 6-1, 6-4, 6-2

Nadal played a controlled match today but it was not as easy as the score looks like. Gabashvili was not afraid of rallying with Nadal from the baseline and often came up the winner in these exchanges.

Teimuraz plays very well from the baseline and Nadal’s top spin shots to his backhand didn’t do much damage. Gabashvili also has an excellent forehand and when he flattens it the ball shoots like a torpedo off his racquet.

Lots of Nadal’s short balls were dismissed with a single forehand winner. Nadal eventually prevailed since he also managed the windy conditions better than Gabashvili.

It was a very entertaining match and Gabashvili can definitely gain confidence from his performance and learn what it takes to be a top player.

Fernando Gonzales – Rui Machado 6-3, 6-2, 6-3

The Gonzales – Machado match was very similar to the above one; the score looks like a one way street but there were many top clay court rallies that the crowd enjoyed.

Machado is a clay court player and knew how to play Gonzales but Fernando’s forehand and first serves were just too fast in many cases.

Great practice match for Gonzales and he seemed in good form. I am looking forward to more Gonzales matches and he is definitely another player to look for in the last rounds of Roland Garros.

I probably won’t see Federer tomorrow since I have only the tickets to the Suzanne Lenglen court but I hope he stays in the tournament so that I can see him play live later…

Oh, and one more thing; if you don’t like crowds, then Roland Garros is definitely not for you.