New Delhi: Twenty-four matches had been scheduled for the opening day of the French Open championship but with rain falling for most of the day, organisers were forced to cancel 17 of them.
In the women's draw Justine Henin and Serena Williams advanced to the second round.
While Henin beat Russia's Elena Vesnina 6-4, 6-3 easily, Venus had a tougher match.
She took three sets to overcome Bulgarian teenager Tsvetana Pironkova 5-7, 6-1, 6-1.
The rains meant that Henin had to wait for more than five and a half hours before her match began.
"Well, yes, the circumstances were hard. It was a tough day when I started this tournament like the one I ended in Berlin. And I must say, it was a bit tiring with these weather conditions, you know. The weather is appalling, and it's going to be the same throughout the weeks," Henin said after the match.
The top-ranked Belgian will now met Austria's Tamira Paszek who brushed aside the challenge of Aiko Nakamura of Japan 6-4, 6-0.
Henin and Williams have been drawn to meet in the quarter-finals. They had faced each other in the semi-final of the 2003 French Open, too, where Henin had won in three sets.
"Yeah, I think they're pretty tough conditions. I think the rain really slows the court down, and so it just plays a lot slower. And, you know, she was obviously able to get more balls back because my balls weren't skidding as well as they could have," Williams said.
In the other matches the younger sister of Marat Safin, Dinara Safina, beat Yuliana Fedak of Ukraine 7-5, 6-4.
In the men's , Potito Starace of Italy beat Ivo Minar of the Czech Republic 4-6, 6-1, 6-4, 7-6 (5), and Janko Tipsarevic defeated Dusan Vemic 7-6 (3), 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 in an all-Serb match.
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