#RG16 Day 4: Murray struggles, everyone else cruises

On paper, Day Four of the French Open promised to be a straightforward affair. And, for the most part, it was. In fact, as far as straightforward affairs go, it was about as straight as you can get. Apart from a little wobble here and there, of course.

The best of the men:
Andy Murray is a giver. A crowd pleaser. A man who likes to make sure that people get their moneys’ worth. And so, seeing that seeds were romping home across the board with ease, he decided to make things interesting. Five-set interesting. Yes, in another inexplicable match (given the differential in rankings), Murray managed to eek out a 6-2 2-6 4-6 6-2 6-3 victory and ensure the Chatrier mob got some bang for their euro.

“I lost my way on the court today, you know, for quite a while,” Murray mused. “I was struggling to win points at one stage. I couldn’t see where his shots were going.”

“You can’t play too many matches like this if you want to go far in this tournament.”

Another man who has a penchant for the dramatic is Gilles Simon. The Frenchman took the long road to victory on Court 1, grinding down Guido Pella 4-6 1-6 7-5 7-6(4) 6-4 in a timeless affair.

Elsewhere, things were a lot more straightforward. Stan Wawrinka is now over his Geneva jet lag and demolishing opponents at will. He took down Taro Daniel 7-6(3) 6-3 6-4. Milos Raonic marched on, serving Adrian Mannarino off the court, and Kei Nishikori went in for a bit of symmetry on Court 1, brushing aside Andrey Kuznetsov 6-3 6-3 6-3.

It was a tale of two emotions for the Aussies. Nick Kyrgios continued his fantastic clay court form with a 6-3 6-2 6-1 annihilation of Igor Sijsling. But there was heartbreak for Wildcard Jordan Thompson who left it all on the court as he went down 6-7(2) 6-3 7-6(3) 6-7(4) 12-10 to 27th seed Ivo Karlovic.

The women’s action:
Whisper it quietly, but everyone who should have won appears to have won in the women’s side of the draw. It’s not often you can say that in this day and age.

Yes, on the bottom half of the draw the main seeds have, for once, made it towards the weekend of a tournament relatively unscathed (although there’s always Friday to mix things up). Simona Halep was first on Chatrier, and after a tricky first set against Zarina Diyas, she romped home 7-5(5) 6-2. Garbine Muguruza followed Halep on to court and duly dismantled Myrtille Georges 6-2 6-0.

It was a similar story on Lenglen, where Kvitova remained uncharacteristically consistent and walloped Su-Wei Hsieh 6-4 6-1, before Aga Radwanska skipped around a Caroline Garcia-shaped banana skin 6-2 6-4.

And so this bizarre – but entirely expected – set of results continued. Safarova destroyed Golubic, Kuznetsova swatted aside Watson, Stephens did the same to Cepede Royg and Stosur got the better of Zhang Shuai.

Yep, it was a truly inexplicable day for the WTA.

Ones to watch…
If you’re looking for upsets today, you might want to go watch a soap opera: on paper it should be plain sailing for the likes of Novak, Rafa and Serena.

But there are some tasty encounters around the grounds today. Bouchard v Bacsinszky will be interesting, Baghdatis v Tsonga should be fun, and Ferrer v Monaco has five set thriller written all over it.

Then there’s Bernie. Anyone fancy a bit of Tomic v Coric? Yes please. That is arguably one of the matches of the day (out on Court 14).