TENNIS/French Open: As first-day scripts go this wasn't one that would be competing to win the Palm d'Or a few hundred kilometres farther south. The narrative was predictable, the plot thin, the characterisation typecast and entirely derivative. This, however, is how day one of the newly lengthened 15-day Grand Slam tournament is supposed to go. Enter world number one Roger Federer. Exit, reluctantly, Diego Hartfield.
These fraught first days are also why they have seeding. It's so players like Federer can arrive at the second major of the year but not quite turn up on court and still dog out a win against an Argentinian who had to battle through three matches just to qualify for the main draw and is ranked 155 places below him.
Few would say the mishits, overhits and underhits that characterised the first set of Federer's 2006 French Open assault suggested anything other than the 24-year-old's tilt at making history was hesitantly kick-started. A tournament win here would make him a six-time Grand Slam winner and, if he goes on to win Wimbledon and the US Open, he will become only the third man to win all four Grand Slam events in the same calendar year.
Given this tournament has been sold on the prospect of a much-touted final between the refined ability of Federer and the game's natural force, 19-year-old Rafael Nadal, the only player in the world who can walk onto a clay court with the number one and not assume the role of underdog, there could be cause for mild alarm.
Although Federer has played Roland Garros seven times, he has lost three times in the first round, most recently in 2003. But that was the old Federer and this is the new.
He drifted to 3-0 down in the first set to an opponent he had never heard of and it was then word went round of a struggle on Centre Court between the number one and a player making his tour-level debut.
But when Federer broke back and brought the match to 3-2 before taking a faltering first set 7-5, that's when the French fans began to drift off to lunch.
Very rarely do debutants get a second bite against a champion, and with empty stomachs complaining, the French simply summed up the scene and went off to dine.
Federer duly won in three unimpressive sets 7-5, 7-6, 6-2 and declared confusingly he was going back to Switzerland for four days but would be in Paris for Wednesday, which is when he next steps on court.
The organisers also took a hit from the man who recently beat Brazilian soccer star Ronaldinho to the world Laureus sports award. Federer had asked not to play on Sunday. But, hey, this is France.
"I requested not to play on Sunday so I wasn't happy to play today," he said afterwards. "I was never happy about that idea. I told everybody that I didn't want to play Sunday. Anyway, they decided to do it that way. But I'm through. I can go home to Switzerland and come back in four (sic) days and be ready for Wednesday."
Federer hit 49 unforced errors in the game, a statistic that wouldn't be out of place beside the name of Serena Williams on a particularly unfocused day.
"The unforced-error stats, I don't like them very much," continued the Australian Open winner in a surly manner but with the expression of the man who had escaped the hangman's noose.
"It was a difficult beginning. I think the circumstances were difficult. There was a lot of wind. But I know when I mishit, it is sometimes not an unforced error."
Tim Henman, now one of the old-stagers, also went through to the second round, with a satisfying win over Denmark's Kenneth Carlsen, 6-3, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, while the fancied David Nalbandian advanced in three sets.
Overall, nothing seismic in the first wind-blown day, with only six men's and women's matches played in the first Sunday start. Henman did say he enjoys Paris, enjoys the clay. He is learning to enjoy, he says. He's 31 years old - maybe it's about time.
