Welcome to the French

It's Sunday morning, the sun is streaming through the windows, the glorious terracotta clay of Roland Garros is on the TV and Svetlana Kuznetsova's guttural grunts signifies the beginning of my favourite time of year.

If you look at the scoreline alone Kuz is creaming Cirstea, but as ever in tennis looks can be deceiving. Here is a quarter finalist of last year playing the eventual champion; on paper, a juicy match. In reality not so much. Cirstea is nowhere near her standard of last year (where she beat Jankovic among others), and Kuz has been struggling for any kind of consistency since that 2009 French Open win. Not the best match I've ever seen.

Kuz wins 6-3, 6-1.

The first match (that I've seen) of this years French Open is done and dusted and boy do I feel happy. Two weeks of sock-staining clay-ey goodness and then it's on to the grass court season. The shortest, the sweetest, the best. I've got tickets for the second Thursday on Court 1. Yay!

Up next, Robin Soderling, my hero from last year; the only man to have beaten Nadal at the French for about 100 years. I like Nadal, don't get me wrong, but I'm of the firm belief that the more winners, the better. Plus who could forget and begrudge Federer his career grand slam/15th (record breaking) slam/weepy first French/affirmation to many (including me) that he is the best player ever seen in tennis?

I'll keep you blogged...