Ankle-length tights, long-sleeved shirts or complementary garments ... Some of the protagonists at the start of Roland Garros were forced to protect themselves from the cold with unusual outfits.

They did, among others, Cori Gauff and Johanna Konta in Suzanne Lenglen, after Victoria Azarenka and Danka Kovinic left her.

So did Andy Murray, in the Philippe Chatrier, in the purest style of her brother Jamie, who has a habit of playing doubles in long pants, in her match against Stan Wawrinka.

The Scotsman fell 6-1, 6-3 and 6-2 in what could be his final farewell to the tournament.

"Are you kidding? Don't you see what's going on? What are we doing here? It's a bit ridiculous," he complained to chair umpire Azarenka, a recent US Open finalist.

Their first round match was interrupted by the rain and the judge initially decided that the players would wait on the court until the rain stopped.

"You can't hold the racket because it's too wet. I'm not going to wait here. It's too cold," argued the former world number 1, who would end up winning 6-2, 6-1 after the restart.

Both tennis players spent the forced half-hour truce in the locker room.

The change of dates that the pandemic has forced leaves Roland Garros shivering.

Although in the last week of May and the first of June, the usual dates of the tournament, the temperatures are not usually too high, they have nothing to do with this winter-scented autumn that has rushed to Paris.

Considerable decline

The abrupt change in temperatures has surprised everyone.

Carlos Moyà, who was with Rafael Nadal in a still summer Rome, commented on it, as well as José Perlas, who traveled directly from Hamburg to Paris with Dusan Lajovic.

Almost empty stands in Paris, with a maximum allowed capacity of 1,000 people after the initial intention to be 5,000, and players with almost camouflage equipment.

The forecasts for the first week of the tournament are not very encouraging.

There will be an opportunity to release the retractable roof of the Philippe Chatrier, the only court that allows indoor matches to be played.

Nadal makes his debut this Monday in the fourth shift of the Central, around 5.30 pm, against the Russian Egor Gerasimov, 83rd in the world and debutant in the final table of the tournament.

The game, like the entire tournament, can be seen on Eurosport.

The defending champion and 12-time tournament winner was belligerent against the new balls being played with this year, Wilson instead of Babolat.

His judgment finds a certain consensus among clay court specialists, who will not have a ball sensitive to topspin impact in this edition, the predominant ball on this surface.

It is a Roland Garros unlike any other, with a less predictable outcome.

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