I found myself irresistibly drawn to the Grandstand again today, where Jo-Wilfried Tsonga was scheduled to play his first Grand Slam singles match since he scared the bee-jayzus out of Novak Djokovic in the Australian Open final at the end of January. The last time we saw Jo-Willy was way back in May in the exotic locale of Casablanca, where he pulled out of his semifinal with Gilles Simon because of a bum knee that would require surgery (on the miniscus) and extensive rehabilitation.

Tsonga couldn't be match-fit or Grand Slam tough; it would be unrealistic to expect him to last long playing best of best-of-five tennis on hard courts with a rebuilt knee. And there was this: how can you resist checking out a match featuring a guy named. . .Santiago Ventura.

Ironically, the last complete match Tsonga had played before today's US Open debut was with - Santiago Ventura! That was in the quarters of Casablanca, where Tsonga buried him in a desert storm of creative shotmaking, three-and-three. But hey, Santiago Ventura? The name alone suggests heroics, and his chance of beating Tsonga would better here than anywhere in the foreseeable future.  This match had high-drama written all over it: Santiago Ventura's Search for the Temple of Luxilon. . . Santiago Ventura in the Kingdom of Tsonga!

Tsonga walked out onto the court in a white baseball cap, with the brim worn slightly crooked. As he prepared to warn-up, he glanced at his father, Didier. Papa Tsonga, dressed in Adidas whites from head to toe, looked like a West Indian cricket bowler, but he hails from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and his sport of choice had once been team handball, which is something like hockey minus the ice, skates, sticks, puck and toothless, Canadian farm boys.

Tsonga opened the match with a 130-mph-plus ace, but on the very next point he attacked the net, hit a sublime backhand half-volley cross-court to the corner, and made the mistake of admiring his shot. Ventura ran it down, and made a weak cross-court return. Standing straight up, Tsonga hit an ultra-casual cross-court forehand to the open court, as if to say, "get lost." But his expression clouded over as he watched Ventura sprint over and smack a winner down the line. It was just as well that Tsonga got the memo early: You do not, repeat, do not, pull that Ilie Nastase crap on anyone in today's game.

Of course, Tsonga can't help himself - he's a supremely natural player, who's as in tune with the spin and pace of the ball as a jazz saxophonist is with an unspooling piece of improvisational music. Nice image, right? But this is tennis, not some smoky dive where your feet stick to the floor. Tsonga, perhaps a bit surprised by the intensity and pace of an actual match situation, didn't win another point in that first game, as Ventura ripped a forehand pass off an iffy drop-volley to break.

In the second game, Tsonga pulled out one of the better trick shots I've seen recently. Caught flat-footed at the net, he ran back to retrieve a lob and it looked like he would produce a Bucharest Backfire; for you pups out there, that's a passing shot hit with your back to the net, going away, with a radically altered grip. But Tsonga spun on the ball at the last moment and scooped up a gentle lob. it wasn't a very good lob, and as a result Ventura soon was up 2-0.

Welcome back to the big-time, Jo-Willy.

Ventura held, to lead 3-1. He's a good mover, and despite his Spanish roots he shows no reservations about approaching the net when a particularly penetrating shot calls for it. He's a bit like Fernando Gonzalez, although he doesn't create as much power. Ventura is an adventurer, even though he prefers the backward baseball cap to the felt fedora with the sweat-stained crown.

Little by little, though, Tsonga got into the flow of the match; he made adjustments in his pace and shot selection, he curbed his tendency to get frustrated and over-hit. It occurred to me as the games rolled on that one of the great things about tennis is that you can be big, like Tsonga, you can be capable of doing it all, shot-wise, like Tsonga, and you can be an imposing, physical presence, like Tsonga - all of it -  and it's a lot -  isn't enough. It takes something other than talent and tools to win a tennis match, and that's the controlling reality of the game. What it takes is a mind that can accurately read and respond to the myriad pressures and options that sprout like blossoms each time the ball leaves the strings of an opponent, and command the right adjustment and response.

I'm not saying that Tsonga lacks that kind of mind; he demonstrated in Australia that he has it. But his situation - returning to competition, relatively cold -  demonstrated the process. The mind of a player is the epoxy that holds together his game; like all epoxies, you have to mix two parts (let's call them technique and determination) together, apply, and wait for the epoxy to "set" as the interaction of the two gooey chemicals creates a powerful adhesive. Tsonga's game did not set in the first set, and Ventura won it in a tiebreaker.

At that point, I left the match to track a few other results. One of the great advantages of best-of-five tennis, especially on clay, is that when an underdog wins the first set, you can comfortably take a break and go have a bite of lunch, do laundry, write an epic poem. . . chances are that by the time you return, things will either be over, in which case you got something useful done, or they'll just be getting interesting.  . . Yeah, yeah, I know: what about that break point escaped with an out-the-wazoo let cord winner that turned the tide back toward the favorite in the fourth game of set 2 ??????  What about it, indeed. It's mere information. There are more important things to contemplate in any given match than the vagaries of the day.

Anyway, by the time I returned, Tsonga had wrested the momentum back from Ventura by winning the second and third sets. He apparently crammed a lot of experience into what amounted to about a two-hour window, because Tsonga applied pressure nicely in the fifth game of the fourth set. Serving and at deuce, Ventura threw in a wobbly backhand that Tsonga took in the mid-court, moving forward, and buried in Ventura's backhand corner. Down break point, Ventura hit a second serve and tried a drop shot after a brief rally. Tsonga, barreling toward the net, made short work of that unfortunate choice.

I watched the final stages of the match with my friend and colleague from the French sports daily, L'Equipe, Philippe Bouin. He told me that Tsonga is generally admired for his attitude and desire to succeed. "He's not like some French guys, who sometimes are not sure why they are out there." Philippe also told me that Tsonga spent a good deal of his time off in Switzerland, where he has a place. Because of France's tax structure, most of the top French players now live either in Switzerland or the US. "They can't go to Monaco," Philippe said, "Because General (Charles) De Gaulle declared that Monaco is part of France, and Frenchmen living there had to pay taxes like any other Frenchman."

We had a nice chat as we watched Tsonga, puffed up by the critical break, raise his game to slam the door on Ventura. Tsonga is often compared with Muhammad Ali, and the parallel is apt. Tsonga is built along similar lines, he's comparably if not identically baby-faced, and both of them have a penchant for speaking slowly, in a hushed, sometimes raspy whisper. Tsonga is not a loquacious man; ask him a question and he cuts the the chase, providing a short answer. What did he think of his return to competition? "I was just happy to be on the court.  I didn't play a really good tennis, but I played with what I'm possible to do, and that's it."

Tsonga recalled the gradual deterioration of his knee, and spread his hands wide enough to embrace a basketball when he tried to show how swollen his knee had been before he gave Gilles Simon a walkover in the Casablanca semis. A serious injury can wreak havoc with a tennis player's state of mind. Sitting there at home (a most unusual place to find a player), or undergoing rehab following surgery, is an invitation to depression. I asked Tsonga if he had fallen prey to depression, and he answered without hesitation:

"No, no. No problems, because when I don't play tennis I have a lot of things to do, like see my family, see my friend, because when we play tennis we don't have time for that. So at this moment it's good for that, and it give me a lot of, I don't know, a lot of power, you know, when I come back."

Giving Tsonga more power than he already has could be a dangerous thing for the rest of the draw, but it might be asking too much to expect a four or five match run here. He has the game, no doubt about that. But the strongest epoxies are also that ones that take the longest to set.