Expecting the unexpected

Last week's AI and Champions League finals took most of my focus but now that they are both over, the French Open is starting to become the center of my attention. And what a French Open this has been.

The great thing about the only Grand Slam event played on clay is that this is where most upsets take place. Of course you can argue that in Wimbledon, you have your fair share of upsets when the obscurely-ranked superservers blow away the top-ranked baseliners. But when you look at the stats, you probably have more one-slam wonders who won the French Open: Michael Chang, Andres Gomez, Thomas Muster, Yannick Noah, and Iva Majoli, to name a few. Under the assumption that the following people will never win another slam (and the odds are pretty good for this), you can even add Alberto Costa and Gaston Gaudio (maybe you can even throw in Anastasia Myskina in the mix). And then you can also count the all-time greats who have never won the FO - Sampras, McEnroe, Connors, Becker, Edberg, Hingis, Davenport (although she may, just may, win this one), Venus Williams. It is truly in this particular event where you come to expect the unexpected.

So I guess I should no longer be surprised when last year's defending champ Myskina gets booted out in the first round (of course she had issues to contend with). Or when Nalbandian loses to Hanescu, Mauresmo loses to Ivanova, and even Venus Williams loses to virtual unknown Sesil Karatantcheva. Am I surprised Mary Pierce reaches the quarterfinals after being unable to convert her first 10 matchpoints against Patty Schnyder? Well okay sort of but not really. Even Daveport's win over Kim Clijsters (whose game is better suited to clay) is quite a feat especially when you consider that Lindsay has lost 6 straight times to Kim, rankings be damned. And this just in - Justine Henin-Herdenne wins 4 straight games to come from a break down and win 7-5 in the third set against Svetlana Kuznetsova.

The women's draw is wide open with most of the ladies left in the draw having a decent shot at a finals berth, and even at winning the title. The interesting thing though is that whereas the women's game is so unpredictable nowadays, it is quite easy to guess the results in the men's tour, granted of course you have Roger Federer in the draw, or Rafael Nadal if it is a claycourt event. It would in fact be shocking if neither of these two men won the title. But in a tennis event where nowadays the top-seed rarely takes home the trophy, having the favorites lose shouldn't really be big news. Karatantcheva French Open winner? Heck, why not?