Two Hundred Miles from Eastbourne

Bonjour from Paris!
I feel privileged to be attending the second week of the greatest clay court tournament in the world, in one of the world's greatest cities. The weather provided a pleasing welcome yesterday evening when, an hour or so after cold and rain in Rouen, I was greeted by warm sunshine as I headed into Port d'Auteuil.
Having been offered a full press accreditation pass for either myself or my colleague to take up, to be brutally honest, I drew the short straw! So I made do with a visitor ground pass, while my colleague had access to Philippe Chatrier and Suzanne Lenglen Courts. But you make the best of things. I'd been on Centre and Lenglen before anyway, and for the first time I tasted the Court One experience.
And there was an added bonus of a match previously scheduled for Suzanne Lenglen Court. Maria "Maria, you're hot!" Kirilenko (I'm just remembering the chants from some local boys when she played Eastbourne a couple of years ago) took on the rising German star Andrea Petkovic. Like her slightly more hotly-tipped - but lower-seeded - compatriot Julia Georges, Petkovic is entered for this year's Eastbourne event.
And she'd already progressed further than Georges at Roland Garros by reaching the 4th round. Stuttgart champion Georges's loss to Marion Bartoli in the 3rd round was one of many shocks in the women's event so far. Even though Bartoli is ranked higher (11th to 17th), clay is certainly her least best surface.
Maria Kirilenko - an excellent doubles player who's scaled the world's top 20 and is seeded 25 - received some loud support in the less than half-full but atmospheric mini-stadium of Court One. One man was particularly vociferous, and led some of the crowd in noisy chants and songs. I was sitting very near to him at one point. I'm sorry, but I had to move. I love that kind of passion from fans and players, but I was virtually next to him, and it was ear-bleeding.
I was surprised by the mixture of seats on Court One - conventional "bucket-style" chairs at the lower levels, and benches on the top rows. You probably wouldn't want to sit on the benches all day, but they added to the more open-air, less formal atmosphere of a smaller show court.
Kirilenko and 15th seed Petkovic were very evenly matched, both being hard-hitting grunters with superbly powerful shots off both wings, enough tactical know-how, but not exactly the flair of a Henin, Mauresmo, Schiavone or even Radwanska.
It's a sign of the times that this style of play, once unique when pioneered by the revolutionary, individual Monica Seles, is now so common-place in the women's game that there are literally hundreds of women who play like this. Kirilenko and Petkovic do it better than most, but last night they looked very much like players a little below the top level. Sharapova, on Centre Court, was doing it so much better.
Still, it was an entertaining, competitive match, and the more likely winner took it in three. Petkovic performed her trademark dance at the end after sealing it 6-2, 2-6, 6-4. She was receiving vociferous support of her own by the end. No doubt some of it from German fans understandably excited by the best period in their national women's game since the days of Steffi Graf and Anke Huber, and Petkovic's delight was infectious.
Court One is a monumental sight from the outside, with all the singles champions' names engraved on individual slabs at the top. We're talking over a hundred slabs, of course. It circles from H Briggs in 1891 through to Nadal and Schiavone in 2010, with around ten to twenty slabs spare for engraving the forthcoming champions, before the circle is complete. I wonder if the organisers have considered what to do then?
If you don't know, the French Championships, as they then were, were only open to French residents until the 1920s. So it was quite a surprise for me to discover that Mr H Briggs (I've still to trace his full first name) was British. The sole non-French champion before Kornelia Bouman of the Netherlands took the women's crown in 1927, was however a resident of France. Only one British man has won the title since - Fred Perry in 1935. Could Andy Murray change all that this weekend?
The first six slabs have just one name on them - women didn't compete until 1897. The first female champion was F Masson. In my research, I've found her named, sometimes "Francoise" and sometimes "Adine Masson". Whichever she preferred, she won the Championships for the first three years, and took the title a further twice. Hope that helps for trivia anoraks like me.
There is, of course, also plenty of opportunity to share in the atmosphere of the crowd around the Place des Mousquetaires, between Court Philippe-Chatrier and Court One, watching the big court action on the gigantic screen. It's comparable to Wimbledon's "Henman Hill" (or is it "Murray Mound"? Take your pick.)
Today saw Andy Murray complete his match against Serbia's Viktor Troicki, which was stopped at two sets all due to bad light yesterday evening. A true comeback win - two sets to love down and trailing 2-5 in the final set, he played more aggressively at key moments to seal the decider 7-5.
Gael Monfils saw his impressive run end with a straight sets loss to an under the radar Roger Federer. I've been used to seeing Jo-Wilfried Tsonga's adverts for Kinder Bueno on mainstream French TV each time I've visited France in the last few months. Now, I regularly see Monfils in a milk or orange juice or something advert (sorry to the brand, I clearly haven't seen it enough times to remember it yet). Both men are extremely marketable and exhilarating for French tennis. They're both Grand Slam title contenders, but still always a very outside bet.
The images of Tsonga and Ana Ivanovic have been plastered all over Eastbourne in the last few weeks. They both have charisma and considerable tennis talent. The biggest "names" entered into the tournament are Venus Williams and Lleyton Hewitt. But perhaps organisers feel that, as they've both been out injured for some time - as well as being nearer to the "dirty thirty" age mark - that Tsonga and Ivanovic are safer bets. They both have extra time to prepare for grass, having lost in the 3rd and 1st round respectively, at Roland Garros.
Also today, Francesca Schiavone scored a win for flair with a 1-6, 7-5, 7-5 triumph over an impressive Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (another Eastbourne 2011 entrant). And Marion Bartoli - who brings to mind more of the spirit and game of Monica Seles - delighted her home crowd by beating two-time Grand Slam champion Svetlana Kuznetsova.
So it's Schiavone versus Bartoli in the semi finals. Both Eastbourne regulars, entered again for this year's event, and a guarantee, in my opinion, of an interesting player in the French Open final.