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After a wet and windy start, the first week of the French Open<\/strong> threatened to fizzle out. Players complained of the cold<\/a>, grumbled over inhospitable living conditions<\/a>, and laboured out on the heavy courts with their slow balls, in front of a drastically curtailed<\/a> number of fans. Paris was in the throes of a second wave of coronavirus<\/a>.<\/p>\n At least the US Open<\/a> had served as something of a novelty, with a deserted Flushing Meadows providing the backdrop as Grand Slam tennis made its comeback. On the other hand even the return of Rafael Nadal, Simona Halep, and Elina Svitolina, who skipped New York for health reasons,\u00a0 could not mask the lack of frivolity in autumnal France. Then on Wednesday, Serena Williams withdrew from her second-round match citing an Achilles injury<\/a>, taking with her one of the tournament’s major talking points as she strives to tie up Margaret Court<\/a> on twenty-four Grand Slams.<\/p>\n Other seeds fell by the wayside, notably number two Karol\u00edna Pl\u00ed\u0161kov\u00e1 and number four Daniil Medvedev. But Pl\u00ed\u0161kov\u00e1 lost out to Je\u013cena Ostapenko<\/a>, French Open champion in 2017 when Pl\u00ed\u0161kov\u00e1 reached the semi-finals, while Medvedev<\/a> has never reached beyond the first round at Roland Garros.<\/p>\n The likely contenders – Nadal looking for an unprecedented thirteenth French Open title<\/a>, world number one Novak Djokovic<\/a> seeking to close the Grand Slam gap, victor in 2018 Simona Halep, and Dominic Thiem<\/a>, the newly-crowned US Open champion who has twice finished runner-up in France – progressed flawlessly. Home favourite Ga\u00ebl Monfils<\/a> and US Open finalist Victoria Azarenka<\/a> went out.<\/p>\n Then on Friday the clouds lifted and Court Philippe Chatrier, still limited to just 1,000 spectators, seemed to grow in magnitude as the volume turned up a notch. In the match of the tournament so far, France’s own Caroline Garcia came back from a first-set thrashing to beat Elise Mertens 1-6, 6-4, 7-5<\/a>, buoyed then hauled over the line by a rapturous smattering of locals.<\/p>\n A stormy first week<\/a>\u00a0also saw an epic five-setter<\/a> between Andrey Rublev and Sam Querrey, while at the end of a bad-tempered encounter with the feisty Sara Errani, a victorious Kiki Bertens left the court sobbing in a wheelchair<\/a>. The French Open picked up the pace over the weekend, as Italian newcomer Jannik Sinner blasted past a sickly Alexander Zverev<\/a>, while the talented Polish teenager Iga \u015awi\u0105tek saw off top-seeded Halep in straight sets<\/a>. Danielle Collins battled past former champion Garbi\u00f1e Muguruza<\/a>, and French wild card Hugo Gaston gave Thiem a scare<\/a>.<\/p>\n