Paris ? Imagine this: The third tour-level match of your professional tennis career is against Rafael Nadal in a 9,950-seat stadium at the French Open.

You’ve watched Nadal from afar. You know all about his recently snapped 81-match winning streak on clay. The two consecutive titles at Roland Garros, too. So you have an idea of what to expect, right? Not one bit, according to Flavio Cipolla, the qualifier from Italy who lived the above scenario Thursday.

“I had seen him on TV,” the 227th-ranked Cipolla said. “But playing him really makes an impression.”

Nadal built his current, more modest, run on clay to two matches, reaching the French Open’s third round by beating the wide-eyed Cipolla, 6-2, 6-1, 6-4, on a day that the often surprise-filled Grand Slam tournament played to form.

Like Nadal, major champions Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, Amelie Mauresmo, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Lleyton Hewitt and Carlos Moya all won, as did up-and-comers such as No. 6 Novak Djokovic and No. 16 Marcos Baghdatis.

That’s not to say there weren’t some tough moments. Williams, for example, fell behind 3-0 in the second set before beating Milagros Sequera of Venezuela 6-0, 7-6 (3) in a match pushed back a day because of darkness.

“It was weird,” said Williams, who counts the 2002 French Open among her eight Grand Slam titles. “I didn’t feel like I played my best tennis throughout the whole match. I was kind of struggling out there to get the rhythm – maybe because I had too many days off.”

Sharapova didn’t get much time to rest her problematic shoulder, playing on a second consecutive day, but her only complaint after beating Jill Craybas of the United States, 6-2, 6-1, was that she sometimes feels like “a cow on ice” while on clay.

Already up 2-1, Craybas held three break points at love-40. Sharapova, though, won the next 11 points en route to taking 10 games in a row. At 5-0 in the second set, Craybas finally won another game – a development that drew wild cheers from the crowd, which she acknowledged by raising her arms and smiling meekly.

“I don’t think she was hitting her serve 100 percent,” Craybas said. “Pretty much doing second serves all the time.”

Mauresmo, who acknowledges she feels more pressure playing at home, needed three sets to get past another Frenchwoman, Nathalie Dechy, then credited a nearly two-hour rain delay with allowing her to compose herself. Kuznetsova fell behind 5-0 against Meghann Shaughnessy of the United States, then turned things around to win, 7-6 (4), 6-3.

Hewitt dug the biggest hole of all, dropping the first two sets against 2004 French Open champion Gaston Gaudio. But Hewitt’s 20 aces and Gaudio’s 13 double faults helped change the match’s complexion, and the 14th-seeded Australian put together a 4-6, 3-6, 6-2, 6-4, 6-2 victory.

“Throughout that whole third set, I was just trying to get that third set under my belt. I wasn’t even thinking about the fourth or the fifth,” Hewitt said. “It was the same in the fourth set – just thinking about that set.”

He made 25 unforced errors in the first two sets, then only 19 the rest of the way in his fourth career comeback from a 2-0 deficit.

The French Open is the only major at which Hewitt’s never reached a final.