Losers sore, winners smiling as the "Drench Open" struggles through a wet Tuesday

PARIS – As the 2016 French Open is slowed to a crawl by the rain – or backstroke, take your pick – It has already been nicknamed the “Drench Open” and earned a new Twitter parody account called “RainlandGarros”.

On Tuesday, after a complete washout Monday, the long waits and muddy tracks led to some startling upsets.

Here are four quotes about the conditions. See if you can pick the winners and losers.

Quote No. 1:

Quote No. 2:

Quote No. 3:

Quote No. 4:

Easiest quiz ever. The answers are: 1) Loser. 2) Winner 3) Loser. 4) Winner.

In order: No. 2 seed Agnieszka Radwanska, unseeded Tsvetana Pironkova, No. 6 seed Simona Halep, No. 21 seed Samantha Stosur.

After a Monday during which not a single ball was struck for the first time in 16 years at Roland Garros, the players walked on court over an hour after the scheduled 11 a.m. start time Tuesday and 40 minutes later, they hustled off again for another two hours and 40 minutes.

Then they tried it again, and the upsets were complete, fourth-round matches that should on paper have been done on Sunday.

Radwanska was leading 6-2, 3-0 over the No. 102 ranked Pironkova, who won exactly one match during the clay-court season before arriving in Paris, when they were stopped by rain Sunday night.

When they resumed Tuesday shortly after noon, everything fell apart for the world No. 2. She coughed up six straight games to lose the second set and four more to go down 0-4 in the third. She stopped to have her hand, wrist and forearm massaged at one point, but the delays, and the heavy conditions, did her in.

“I just cannot play in that conditions. I mean, I'm not healthy enough,” a grumpy Radwanska said after the loss.

Halep was up 5-3 in the first set against Stosur when they packed it up Sunday. And when she returned, the heavy groundstrokes of a resurgent Stosur, a finalist here in 2010, were too much for her to counter.

To her credit, Halep was far more gracious to her opponent than Radwanska was to hers.

“I cannot comment about the conditions. I have no words. It was impossible to play, in my opinion. And to play tennis matches during the rain I think it's a bit too much,” she said. “But everyone was in the same situation, and who was stronger won today.”

What else did the two losers have in common? They both accused the tournament of having its priorities in the wrong place.

“No one cares about the players in my opinion. I don't care that I lost the match today, but I was close to get injured with my back, so that's – that's a big problem,” Halep said. “But like I said, no one cares. We have just to go and play.”

“I don't know who allows us to play in that kind of conditions,” Radwanska said. “I mean, I don't think they really care what we think. I think they care about other things, I guess.”

One of those “things” at this point, is trying to get the tournament finished on time and with nearly two full days wasted and a forecast for the next few days that is only scarcely brighter, that’s going to be a race against the clock.

There’s no doubt the conditions were tough. Certainly both Radwanska – despite her disdain for clay – and Halep were favourites in their respective matches, and began well before Mother Nature intervened.

The schedule stress may well have played a role in keeping the players on court in conditions that might normally have stopped play. And there was another factor involved as well even if the International Tennis Federation and the French Tennis Federation will be loath to admit it: after being forced to offer full refunds to fans who showed up Monday only to be completely rained out for the first time since that exact date in 2000, they were looking at another day of Euros and centimes flying out of the coffers.

It is a coincidence that the match between Novak Djokovic and No. 14 seed Roberto Bautista Agut of Spain on Court Philippe-Chatrier kept going after all the other courts had been covered up? Conspiracy theorists would have it otherwise.

When the two finally stopped – after Bautista-Agut took the first set, Djokovic took the second and was leading 4-1 in the third – the match clock stood at EXACTLY two hours, one minute.

The Roland Garros refund policy is as follows: if there is less than one hour of play, a full refund (minus handling charges) of the ticket price is in order. If there is more than one hour of play but less than two hours, a 50 per cent refund applies. If there is more than two hours …you guessed it: no refund.

So those with tickets on the main stadium court were out of luck Tuesday while those with tickets on the other show courts and for the grounds will get half their money back.

Djokovic wasn’t too happy for parts of the match, especially when he was losing, although he did come out for a tour of the Philippe Chatrier court with a Roland Garros umbrella shortly before he came out to play.

In the end, the tournament will offer fans who bought tickets for the last two days first priority for those same tickets in 2017, which is cold comfort for those who did come and left with empty pockets.

As of a result of the last few days, Wednesday’s order of play is packed. There are women’s and men’s fourth-round matches, men’s and women’s quarter-finals and an attempt to catch up with the men’s and women’s doubles, mixed doubles and the juniors, who haven’t even finished their first round in singles despite a Sunday start and haven’t even begun the doubles.

The forecast? It’s marginally better the next two days, with a 40 per cent chance of light rain Wednesday afternoon and a 50 per cent chance of rain on Thursday. So the tournament is a long way from being out of the woods for its scheduled Sunday finale.

If Djokovic wants to win his first French Open, he’ll have to finish his fourth-round match Wednesday and play three more best-of-five matches during the four official remaining days of the tournament. That applies to other aspirants as well, including No. 13 seed Dominic Thiem, No. 7 Tomas Berdych and No. 12 David Goffin.

If Serena Williams – or even her sister Venus – want to win the French Open, they’ll have to win their fourth-round matches Wednesday and play every day until the scheduled Saturday women’s final. Luckily, the women play best-of-three set matches.

In the end, despite all the complaining about the conditions by the players and on social media, weather conditions are part of tennis. These players have been doing this for two decades or more; throughout their competitive lives they’ve had rain delays, slippery courts, muddy courts, long waits, hostile, partisan crowds and – before they got good enough to have linespeople – cheating opponents.

It would be ideal to always play in perfect conditions, with no rain or wind or cold to deal with – like a video game. It rarely happens.

If Radwanska’s physical condition is fragile, if the hand she had surgery on a few years ago gives her trouble in cold, clammy conditions (which she said it did), that was not Pironkova’s problem. The Bulgarian played on the same court, under the same conditions, and probably didn’t feel all that great herself.

Actually, check that: when she got the win, she probably felt like a million bucks.

The best are able to handle whatever is thrown their way, and prevail. And if they do, victory likely feels even sweeter.