It’s very hard to pick winners in the first round of a tennis tournament. Look at the Rome Masters Series for instance. Nicolas Almagro got in as a qualifier and changed the top quarter of the draw drastically. Nikolay Davydenko doesn’t look so good all of a sudden though I’m holding him in the quarters for the time being. And who expected Ginepri to win a match or Malisse to show up let alone beat Gaudio? Roddick’s quarter of the draw opened up for Baghdatis with Robredo and Haas gone. I’ll bet there are a lot of team owners who didn’t even notice Rusedski’s name in the draw till he knocked Robredo out. On the other hand, we’re getting used to Coria losing to a qualifier and we expected Moya to lose to Nadal.

The only semi places that look solid are Federer, Nadal and Nalbandian. Nalbandian is the kind of guy you want to save for hard court slams and Masters Series events because he is a regular semifinal guy. Not so great for his career but a good thing for fantasy tennis because you can pick Federer and Nadal for the final and pencil Nalbandian into the semis. I think this is what they mean when they say that fantasy games skew the sport. How can something be good for the your fantasy team but not the player’s career?

You can never count out home court advantage. Filippo Volandri and Andy Murray had almost identical statistics in their first round match, they both had an abysmal number of unforced errors, but Volandri had the crowd behind him. As he was serving for the match, he hit a drop shot that sat on the net for a second before rolling towards the sideline and landing on Murray’s side of the net. Home court adantage indeed.

I was 16/32 in the first round. That’s exactly 50% which means that I was about as effective as someone picking petals to determine if she loves me, she loves me not. Complain if you like but don’t tell me you had Rusedski and Malisse winning. Did you?