Venus Displays New Look for Paris. (AP)
It’s hard to decide what the bigger story was in the opening day of action at the 2010 French Open. One of the newest stars on the ATP tour was forced out of contention early while one of the veterans of the WTA tour made more noise with her barely there outfit than her usual vocal deliveries on court. As usual the French Open kicked off with a very Parisian “ooh la la” bang that’s sure to last the whole fortnight.
It wouldn’t be the French Open without some fashion news dominating the early headlines and this year is no exception. Though Venus Williams has one of the more subdued personalities on tour, she’s making up for it with her new revealing on-court outfits which started at the Australian Open where some thought she wore no panties at all.
Today she took it up a notch, almost literally, when before her 6-3, 6-3 dismissal of Patty Schynder, Williams came on court wearing what looked like a black version of her now trademark red “can-can” dress. But when she slipped off her warmup jacket, she got a fair share of whistles from the men in the crowd when her outfit revealed a black lace pattern that offered more than a tease of her pantyline. Although I’m all for tennis being fashion forward, isn’t the point of tennis stars wearing branded clothing to get regular consumers to buy the same garb as the pros wear? Who else but Venus would dare wear this at their local club unless they really wanted to find some action off the court?
Meanwhile a player everyone hoped would do well in Paris just for his post match press conference quotes was Ernests Gulbis. The rising Latvian star who beat Roger Federer earlier in the spring in Rome was picked by some as a darkhorse favorite. Sadly, Gulbis’s Paris adventure ended early when he suffered a pulled hamstring in his match versus French veteran Julian Benneteau. Gulbis, who tried to fight through the match after losing the first set and going down a break in the second set, eventually retired when the score reached 4-6, 2-6, 0-1 much to the delight of the Frenchman who just had to remain standing throughout the match.
Finally in other first round action, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Robin Soderling, Marin Cilic and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga all won while on the women’s side two seeds said ‘au revoir’ to Paris – Victoria Azarenka and Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez, herself the victim of an back injury suffered during the warm-up in her first round match against Akgul Amanmuradova, lost 2-6, 4-6.
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