Rafael Nadal survived a first round scare on Monday, Maria Sharapova easily advanced to the next round and Tomas Berdych suffered a major upset from a relatively unknown player.
It took Nadal four sets to defeat Daniel Brands of Germany. Brands gave Nadal only his fifth first-set loss ever in the French Open, winning the first set 4-6, the Associated Press reports. Nadal, a favorite to win the Open, came back strtong and won the following sets 7-6 (4), 6-4 and 6-3.
"He was playing unbelievable," Nadal said of Brands. "I tried to find my game and resist. He played a fantastic match and put me in a tricky situation."
Nadal added: "Winning the tiebreaker, well, it was just like some oxygen. I could finally breathe."
Nadal is on the quest for his eighth French Open title. He will play again later in the week.
He also commented to reporters on Monday that tennis needs more transparency in its drug testing of players. He would like tennis to reveal who is being tested and how often, which he believes would cut the amount of questions concerning testing.
"[It's a] very clean sport," Nadal told reporters. "... We don't have a lot of cases of doping."
Sharapova dominated her first round match against Su-Wei Hsieh and won 6-2 and 6-1. She advances to the second round in her bid to defend her French Open title.
Fifth-seeded Berdych suffered the biggest upset of the day by losing to Gael Monfils. The match went 7-6 (8), 6-4, 6-7 (3), 6-7 (4) and 7-5, with the relatively unknown Monfils winning.
