[FurnaceFace]

The morning was reasonable but the afternoon was wicked hot. The court side thermometer read 36 and the stands weren't much cooler, if any. Crazy hot. Court 1 witnessed two epic men's battles which bumped the main attraction of the day.

Spanish García-Lopez and Muller from Luxemberg got Court 1 off to a plodding start with their extremely long 3.5 hr 4 set tilt which the Spaniard won going 7-6 6-7 2 and 2. The first set was 90+ minutes with Lopez getting a hammy taped early on then what looked like a potentially bad ankle injury which he managed to walk off after the trainer looked at him. We also had two welcome but very short rain delays in that first set.

French hopeful Halys couldn't keep a strong first set up and ended up losing to Argentine Trungellitti.

The 150 people or so who lasted through those two sets saw 6th seed Cibulkova moved to Lenglen and then got a win by local Oceane Dodin over Italian Giorgi.

After 5 hours of the marathon first match, standing in line for food, the water fountain, some outer court action, and part of the 5 setter we were tired, hot, a bit burnt, and definitely puddles we decided to tap out and have strength for tomorrow.

Tomorrow in somewhat of a surprise, in the outer court cheap seats of court 2 we have three good matches: Our own 6th seed Raonic starts it off against Belgian Darcis, then 18 seed Bertens and the trifecta is complete with Gulbis vs 7th seed Cilic. On a day where Nadal and Djokovic takeover the Stadiums and The French occupy Court 1, everyone else gets pushed to the Annexes and those of us with cheap seats rejoice. We've been to RG twice before and the Annexes (outer courts) aren't always so full of top seeds but tomorrow looks to be a good day. In between we might get a shot at seeing Abanda on court 17.