NOTEBOOK \ French Open

Safin takes shots: Marat Safin’s not quite sure how much longer he wants to play professional tennis. “I’m 27 years old and already downhill on my career,” the two-time Grand Slam champion said Wednesday after his second-round loss. “If it doesn’t really click, and it doesn’t make any radical changes, and nothing comes up, then we’ll see. It would be sad to live with being a struggling player.” Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia beat the 22nd-seeded Safin 6-4, 6-4, 7-5 “For him, tennis is like a toy,” said Tipsarevic, ranked 80th. “When it’s interesting for him, no one in the world can beat him. But then when it’s not interesting, he just doesn’t show his talent.” Safin dominated the first half of the first set, but his lead melted away as he started sending the ball into the net. “Nothing came together,” he said. “It didn’t click.” The Russian looked set to come back in the second set, when he hit a spectacular shot. During a long rally, Safin dashed to the net, dived to hit a winner and rolled across the court. He was covered in clay, a deep orange stain blooming across the back of his electric green and blue shirt. The effort and execution were so impressive, Tipsarevic took the time to applaud. But the magic didn’t last. Safin won that game but lost the following three. He looked subdued, even despondent, most of the match, and his trademark bad-boy antics looked forced. Safin threw down his racket several times — but never hard — and once kicked the ball into the stands. But mostly he just threw up his hands in apparent exasperation and muttered softly to himself in Russian.

Wrong foot: Anastasia Myskina won the 2004 French Open. Now she’d love to win a match. Myskina lost 6-1, 6-0 to Meghann Shaughnessy in the first round Wednesday, making the Russian 0-7 since August, when she injured a toe on her left foot. She had surgery in January and was hampered in her movement against Shaughnessy, sometimes not even trying to chase down shots. “You can see that I’m moving like a big cow now,” Myskina said. “I can’t run.”

Retirement record: Teimuraz Gabashvili of Russia became the seventh man to quit because of injury or illness during the first round, a French Open record that ties the Grand Slam mark. Gabashvili trailed Flavio Cipolla of Italy 7-6 (6), 6-3, 5-2 when he stopped playing because of pain in his right wrist. Seven men also quit during the first round of the 2002 U.S. Open.

Ljubicic’s cause: Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia is wearing a special patch supporting the International Rescue Committee and promoting the cause of refugees. When he was 13, his family fled the city of Banja Luka, now in Bosnia, because of war. He lived for months as a refugee in Slovenia and Croatia. “I want to do whatever I can to draw attention to the plight of refugees around the world,” Ljubicic said.

Associated Press