Jarkko Nieminen advances confidently into third round at Roland Garros

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Finland's tennis No.1 Jarkko Nieminen moved smoothly through the first two rounds of this year's French Open at Roland Garros in Paris.
      The left-hander removed his first opponent Feliciano Lopez of Spain in straight sets (6-2, 6-4, 7-6) on Tuesday, and on Thursday afternoon he brushed aside wildcard qualifier Mathieu Montcourt of France even more emphatically, winning 6-1, 6-1, 6-4 in less than an hour and a half on court.
      The Nieminen-Lopez encounter was played on a practice court, brought into service after the tournament lost time through interruptions for rain. However, the rather primitive arena conditions did nothing to slow up Nieminen, who badly needs a run in a major tournament after a somewhat shaky start to the season. His ranking has suffered, and he has dropped out of the ATP top 20.
     
Nieminen certainly seems to have struck form at the right moment, as he took Lopez apart in the first two sets, blunting the Spaniard's powerful service and putting away a string of fine backhand passing shots to control the game. His serving was also quite passable, and the first two sets were wrapped up in just over an hour.
      In the third, Lopez got away to a strong start, but Nieminen came back from 4-1 down to take the game to a tie-break, which he won comfortably, 7-2.
     
Thursday's opponent was an unknown quantity. The two had never met before, and Moncourt - although ranked nearly 110 places below Nieminen at 130th on the ATP lists - had shown his credentials by despatching the useful German Benjamin Becker in straight sets in his first-round encounter.
      In the past, Nieminen has sometimes slipped up in situations like this, but today he seemed very eager to get the job done.
      The first set was over in barely 20 minutes, and things did not slow up much after that. The Finn converted seven of the twelve break opportunities that came his way, and was more than equally successful in his net approaches.
      He did drop his service once in the third set, but broke his opponent twice - the second time to love - to run out a comfortable winner.
     
Nieminen, who is seeded 20th at this year's second Grand Slam tournament, will now play Lleyton Hewitt of Australia, the 14th seed.
      Hewitt had his hands full with the 2004 French Open champion Gaston Gaudio of Argentina, who is not seeded this year. Gaudio took a two-set lead before Hewitt turned things around to win 4-6, 3-6, 6-2, 6-4, 6-2 in a little over 3 hours 20 minutes.
      The third round match between Hewitt and Nieminen is likely to be scheduled for Saturday.
     
Finland's other competitor in the French Open, Emma Laine, also progressed on Thursday.
      Laine and her women's doubles partner Alla Kudryavtsheva of Russia demolished the French-German pairing of Sandra Klösel and Virginie Razzano 6-1,6-1 in the first round.
      Laine went out of the women's singles in the first round, losing in three sets (6-1, 5-7, 4-6) to Catalina Castano of Colombia, despite being a set and a service break up at one stage.


Links:
  French Open: Jarkko Nieminen
  French Open: Emma Laine

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