Richard Gasquet looked like he’d rather be anywhere else but Rome, Roddick feasted on his good friend Mardy Fish, and stadiums save the day for U.S. tennis.

Here we are in Rome, the second Masters Series event on clay this year and the first of consecutive Masters events as we move on to Hamburg next week. Let’s set the scene in Rome. I can hear those crazy Italian police sirens in the background. To me they always sound like those Fisher pull toys I used to torture adults with when I was a child. I’d pull those damn things around all day an endless clatter.

Richard Gasquet’s shirt is so red that it’s bleeding on the screen and, as usual, he has his backward pointing white cap. How long do you think it’ll take Gasquet and Sebastien Grosjean and Benjamin Becker and all of those backward hat guys to grow out of the habit. Fashions change you know.

The stands in the tennis complex at the Foro Italico are all bright green and the on-court advertising is white lettering on the green background. Don’t really like the color scheme. Green looks rather loud as a background for the gorgeous red clay on the court. I do love to hear the score called out in Italian, though: trenta quindici – 30-15. Italian is one of the few languages which lovingly pronounce every letter in a word.

I haven’t seen Gasquet’s first round opponent – Luis Horna – play very much but he’s been around for a long time. Evidently his backhand is his weak side because he keeps trying to run around it and Gasquet keeps trying to attack it. Looking at Horna today, I wonder why he hasn’t done much better in his career but maybe that says more about his opponent than it does him.

Gasquet looked good at the beginning of the match and went up 3-2 without having lost a point on his serve. Horna keptpressuring Gasquet’s second serve and Gasquet finally caved in by losing his next service game with two straight double faults and it got worse from there on.

Gasquet isn’t dealing with pressure well these days. Davis Cup was a disaster for him after he decided to sit his ailing knee instead of playing Andy Roddick in the fourth and deciding rubber of the tie between the U.S. and France. Then he lost to Sam Querrey in Monte Carlo two weeks ago.

Maybe, two years from now, we’ll be looking back at all of the cruel things we said about Gasquet and marvel at his play as he turns out to be the guy who ends Roger Federer’s streak at Wimbledon. But right about now, his friend and countryman Jo-WilfriedTsonga looks like he’s just as likely to earn that distinction. You couldn’t mistake Tsonga for Gasquet on the court in any way shape or form. Hell, Tsonga looks excited just sitting in the stands watching Gasquet’s match with Horna whereas Gasquet looks like he was waiting for the next train to arrive.

Gasquet’s feet aren’t quite following his commands and he’s getting tripped up by routine plays such as a moonshot followed by a flat shot. Horna won the first set on a high looping second serve down the middle. Gasquet seems surprised by it and hit the ball into the net. Earth to Rishard.

It the second set it was worse. Gasquet lost his first service game easily then won his second service game but that was the last game he won. In his third service game, Gasquet and Horna got into a backhand crosscourt rally and Horna redirected the ball down the line with a rather weak and short slice. Gasquet got there but you could hear him frame the ball.

In the next game Gasquet framed another ball and the crowd turned on him. Wow, everyone is turning on Gasquet these days and how should he respond? If his knee is still bothering him then obviously he should go home for a rest. Even if it is a physical problem of some sort, it’s quickly turning into a psychological problem and that is turning into acting out on the court precisely by not acting at all. After the match he didn’t seem to know what the problem was:

I don’t know why I played so bad. Last week in training I felt fine and I was happy to come onto the court today. Sometimes in my career I’m really down. Today is one of those moments.

I suspect that he’s shining us on. No one could receive as much grief as he received from his fellow Davis Cup players, his Davis Cup captain, and even the head of the Davis Cup team and not be affected by it.

In the last game of the match, Gasquet served two double faults. The second one gave Horna match point. One point later the agony was over as the qualifier Horna moved on by the score of 6-4, 6-1.

What do you think Gasquet needs?

I had a lot of fun watching Roddick and Mardy Fish – two fast court players – slog it out on clay. Fish made very few accommodations for the clay. He hit the ball as hard and flat as he does every other surface. Roddick could hardly have hoped for a better opening match. This has to be one of the few times he has ever planned on winning a match by looping the ball back to his opponent and waiting for mistakes which is exactly what he did as he jumped out to a 2-0 lead.

If you think about it, Roddick is also lucky that the tour is going in its current direction. There’s one less clay court Masters event each year – if the ATP can settle it’s suit against Hamburg. On top of that, the new Masters event in Shanghai is on a hard court. Money talks because clearly tennis is more popular in Europe than it is in the U.S. – at least in terms of broadcast income – and here Europe losing a Masters events while the U.S. gets to keep all four of its hard court Masters events even though it’s breaching smaller tournaments left and right. The ATP just bought out the event in Las Vegas and sold it to South Africa. South Africa! Did I miss something, is tennis more popular in South Africa than the U.S.?

Indian Wells and Miami bring in a good three or four hundred thousand spectators a year and the broadcast problem is partially a case of overcrowding. In Europe, tennis is second to soccer in gambling income but in the U.S., tennis is far down the scale. Yes, gambling is a bonafide economic indicator.

Broadcast income is more important than ticket income but the U.S. has another advantage – tons of stadiums, both indoor and out, in which to stage a tennis tournament. France, for instance, has a few stadiums that work for such events but the U.S. has tons of them thanks to the popularity of basketball and college sports. Every big Division I school has a basketball arena that would qualify. And though it may be hard to fathom and says way too much about the U.S. subversion of education to the commercial world of sports, the University of Michigan football stadium – known appropriately as the Big House – can seat over 100,0000 screaming football fans.

So the tennis world is staying in the big stadiums in the U.S., leaving behind the smaller facilities in Monte Carlo – which is no longer a required event – and Hamburg, and branching out to the huge new stadiums in Asia. It’s all about the stadiums, don’t you know? If Roddick can hang around long enough, and it looks like he can, this turn of events should help him stay in the top five or six players in the world.

Roddick won the first set 6-2 in 22 minutes. Just over an hour later, Roddick had won his first match, 6-1, 6-4.

Just a quick note on the Federer watch. He says that he’s now 100% healthy and there were two signs in his match with Guillermo Canas that seem to bear him out. (1) The rhythm on his forehand has returned and the reason for that is (2) his movement is back. At one point in his relatively easy victory over Canas, he ran well into the ad court to get around his backhand and hit a curling shot down the line that skipped off the sideline and out of Canas’ reach. That takes some serious movement.

We even had a “did he really do that?” sighting. Canas hit a running forehand down the line and just as Federer was about to overrun the ball, he flicked a backhand dropshot from behind the baseline that dropped over the net oh so softly.

A a few points later, Federer hit a drop shot and Canas hit a pretty good lob to Federer’s backhand side. Federer swung at it and missed it then calmly glided back to the baseline and hit a forehand looper that landed on Canas’ baseline. Canas must have been a bit annoyed by now. He’d had two break points in the game and hit a good lob and here he was frantically running backwards to pick up a ball off the baseline tape. It was all too much and he hit the ball long to end the game.

Federer held serve then broke Canas to win the match, 6-3, 6-3.

On the fantasy tennis watch things are particularly grim. We can’t pick all the top players because we need them for later tournaments and, so far, Gasquet has joined two other second level players by crashing out in the first round. Paul-Henri Mathieu and Filippo Volandri are gone too. I’ll get into that more tomorrow.