Venus Williams, Rafael Nadal set to play at French Open

FRIDAY’S FEATURED MATCHES

(world rankings in parentheses)

Venus Williams, U.S. (3) vs. Agnes Szavay, Hungary (31)

After losing a set Wednesday night before darkness suspended play, Williams felt angry, “but then I wound down and I had my little dog with me.” You’d think that in Paris, they’d let her bring the dog to provide calm and perspective during changeovers.

Rafael Nadal, Spain (1) vs. Lleyton Hewitt, Australia (48) Many athletes try hard. It’s just that the way these two try, this matchup always should be in ancient Rome in the Colosseum with play continuing for days and possibly weeks until somebody collapses and has to be carried out on a stretcher.

Maria Sharapova, Russia (102) vs. Yaroslava Shvedova, Kazakhstan (98)

While rehabbing her shoulder in Phoenix, Sharapova said she took “the Southwest flight every Monday and took it back to L.A. every Friday.” You just hope somebody didn’t see her second-round loss at Wimbledon and consign her to one of those latter seating groups.

Dinara Safina, Russia (1) vs. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Russia (27) Safina made history when she said of her previous rout victim, “She’s still young, and I think she respects me too much.” It became the first known instance of an athlete claiming excessive respect.

Fernando Verdasco, Spain (8) vs. Nicolas Almagro, Spain (31) Two representatives of a surging athletic nation meet just one year after one of them lost to Nadal by 6-1, 6-0, 6-2, and the other by 6-1, 6-1, 6-1. By contrast, this will be group therapy.

A FRENCH MORSEL

Justine Henin, the four-time champion who retired suddenly at age 25 in May 2008, turned up here Thursday to have a Roland Garros alley named after her, and made the stunning revelation, almost unheard-of for an athlete on Brett Favre’s planet, that she doesn’t plan to end her retirement. “I don’t need the competition anymore to be happy,” she said. “I have the adrenaline in another way in my life, and that’s good enough for me.” It was really weird.

THE ENDANGERED AMERICAN MALES

Well, hold onto your red-stained socks, because the last cowboy from the teensy-weensy U.S. rides on. Not only did this paragon of effort from a clay-challenged land, this leftover from nine male starters, this Andy Roddick, barrel through Ivo Minar of the Czech Republic by 6-2, 6-2, 7-6 (2). Not only did he reach the French Open’s third round for the first time in eight years and only the second time in his career; not only did he impress the patrons hanging over the edge at intimate Court No. 2; no, as a drizzle thickened at the start of the third set, he actually barked an expletive because he wanted to keep playing. “Yeah, I didn’t want to come off,” he said. “I felt like the momentum was going my way, and if we would have been on a bigger court, you wouldn’t have been able to hear me say that.”

THURSDAY IN PARIS

Besides Roger Federer and Venus and Serena Williams, No. 4 Novak Djokovic went two sets up on Ukraine’s Sergiy Stakhovsky when they called it a night. . . . One of the world’s unluckiest athletes must be Jelena Dokic, who was leading No. 4 Elena Dementieva, 6-2, 3-4, in the second round when her back went out. She left the court in tears and said, “It’s hard to swallow this a little bit, and very disappointing.” . . . The fifth-ranked Jelena Jankovic, still seeking that first major title, looked excellent in a 6-1, 6-2 romp past Slovakia’s Magdalena Rybarikova.

STAT OF THE DAY

6: The number of set points Federer fended off in a rugged, four-set win against Jose Acasuso.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Jelena Jankovic, on whether Serbian President Boris Tadic gave her any advice when he visited Roland Garros on Wednesday: “He gave us some tips. . . . Did you know if you eat fruit after the meal you get fat? . . . Really. But not in the morning. If you eat it late in the afternoon or in the evening, it turns into fat. That’s sugar. This is something I heard for the first time.”

-- Chuck Culpepper