Now another former No. 1 and French Open champ, Carlos Moya, has to wonder how much time he has left after a first-round exit in five sets to unheralded Eduardo Schwank.

Rafael Nadal has never, ever lost a best-of-five set match on clay. Never. The Spaniard has a perfect 34-0 mark in his career in best of five matches on the dirt, but that fact is not the only reason I’m making him my pick to win a fourth straight French Open.

The French Open draws are finally out. I won’t go into my picks just yet, but I will say it looks good for the top players Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.

“The ATP, as ever, bumbles on in its own fashion, assuring everyone who is bothered to listen that all will be well, while producing publicity material, posters and the like, that appear to have been formulated by someone devoid of the least understanding of what the game is about.”

2008 French Open on ESPN2 (times EST)

A slew of players ranked in the 20s and 30s make up the rest of the seeded contingent, most notably Alona Bondarenko, the No.2 seed. Bondarenko has had her strongest results of the year so far on clay, making quarterfinals at Amelia Island and Berlin, and taking out the likes of Dinara Safina and Svetlana Kuznetsova along the way.

“She’s a young player with great potential, and I just didn’t know how she was going to play,” Jankovic said. “And of course, she wasn’t the favorite. I was the favorite and had the pressure on me. I was defending my title and I’m glad I could cope with the pressure and win it for the second time.”

I said going in that it was going to be tough to draw much value out of the Hamburg winner between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. And after Nadal’s topsy-turvy 7-5, 6-7, 6-3 win over Federer hasn’t changed my mind much.

If you are a fan of clay tennis, or really just tennis for that matter, you had to be impressed with the show Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal put on today in Hamburg.

From a historical standpoint, she is in the conversation with anyone who holds fewer than 10 major titles not named Monica Seles. It is difficult to compare players in “who would win?” questions across eras, even recent eras, due to changes in racket technologies, strong technologies and sports medicine. I do know I would have liked to see Henin and Steffi Graf play on any surface as Graf’s speed, slice backhand and devastating forehand would be nicely contrasted by Henin’s top spin backhand.