For all his success at the French Open over the years, Rafael Nadal has never quite felt loved in Paris and yesterday the seven-times champion vented his frustration at organisers, saying the scheduling was "a joke".
The Spaniard dropped a set to Slovakia's Martin Klizan before winning 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3 to reach the third round but was still smarting from the previous day, when he was unable to play because of rain.
The weather may have been beyond the organisers' control but being put third on the bill on Court Suzanne Lenglen, after one men's match and one women's, was not.
With a poor forecast, what annoyed Nadal most of all was that his opponent in round three today, Fabio Fognini, was due second on, after one women's match, giving him more chance to get his match finished.
"I'm not angry, I just think it's not fair," Nadal said, who admitted he had taken his time to find his rhythm on another cool day at Roland Garros.
"The excuse they told me was because [Lukas] Rosol [who was playing Fognini] had to play doubles. I am sorry, but that's a joke. You have one more week to play doubles if you want to play doubles.
"Why do you want to protect the player who has to play doubles? So I'm going to write myself on the doubles draw then and I have the priority to play? That's not the right excuse to make a schedule like this."
If he wants to win a record eighth title here, Nadal will have to play another five matches in nine days, a tall order for someone who was out for seven months until February because of a serious knee injury.
While Roger Federer, who has always been the crowd's darling, cruised to a 6-3, 6-4, 7-5 win over Julien Benneteau of France in a third-round match, Nadal had his hands full against world No.35 Klizan in round two.
The left-hander took the attack to Nadal and the Spaniard was found wanting in the first set, dropping the ball too short and paying the price.
Four years to the day since he suffered his only ever defeat at Roland Garros, to Robin Soderling, Nadal was in trouble, but only briefly.
A lucky net-cord in the third game of the second set helped Nadal break serve and eased his nerves. From then on, he gradually worked his opponent over in traditional style and eventually ran out a convincing winner.
"I started the match probably with not the right intensity, with more doubts than usual," he admitted.
"I played the way that I had to play, with intensity, you know, with passion, playing more inside.
"So, just happy to be through at the end. The most important thing is to win on these kind of days and hopefully the conditions will be improving, because with these conditions is not easy to play well."
Fourth seed David Ferrer, No 6 Jo Wilfried Tsonga and No 8 Janko Tipsarevic all advanced to round four but home favourite Gael Monfils ran out of steam, letting slip a two-sets lead to lose to Spaniard Tommy Robredo.
Nadal will share the bill today with world No 1 Novak Djokovic, who takes on rising star Grigor Dimitrov, the Bulgarian who beat him when they met in Madrid last month.
Dimitrov's other half, Maria Sharapova, made up for lost time as she finished off Eugenie Bouchard, 6-2, 6-4, having led 4-2 in the second set overnight.
Serena Williams continues to look every inch the likely champion, reaching round four for the loss of six games after a 6-0, 6-2 drubbing of Sorana Cirstea of Romania.
The world No.1, champion here in 2002, was joined by last year's runner-up Sara Errani of Italy and No.4 seed Agnieszka Radwanska.
In the men's doubles, Jamie Murray suffered a disappointing defeat, letting slip a 4-1 lead in the final set as he and Australian John Peers went out to the Colombian pair, Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article