About a year ago, I asked this question: "How do you guide yourself through the tournament so that you maximize your chances of seeing something remarkable and, if not remarkable, at least beautiful?"
I've watched a lot of tennis tournaments since then, sometimes obsessively, and my answer is that you guide yourself by the storylines you witness going into the tournament, extrapolate from there into the way you tell the impending story, and then temper your answer by your own sense of aesthetics.
What do I mean? I think of the storyline as the emergent cultural narrative going into the event, that is, what the sport's commentators are in aggregate talking about. Then you create your own guiding narrative, which may or may not agree with the aggregate conversation. Something like, "Tina the Llama is the one-seed, but I think she's overrated right now, still floating along on her results from months and months ago, so instead I suspect that Yertle the Turtle is more likely to win." And then you bring your aesthetics into play. You might choose to ignore what you see as the key storyline if what it points to doesn't really appeal to you. That is, even you've worked out that Yertle the Turtle is most likely to win, you might instead watch Gretchen the Gnu because you like her game more, even though she'll find a way to lose by the fourth round.
A real-world example: during Djokovic's Era of Invincibility, the culmination of which was his victory at Roland Garros last year, an era that ended in apparent burn-out soon thereafter, the dominant storyline dictated that it was Djokovic's matches that were the obvious ones to watch. After all, he was attempting to complete his career Grand Slam, would be holding all four Slams at once, and looked like he'd soon be threatening Federer's record of career Slam wins. But for me, there was something so inevitable about his success during that time that his matches were only really compelling if he was playing against an opponent whom I enjoyed watching. Otherwise it felt kind of like watching a YouTube video of a train crashing into a giant cardboard box full of other, smaller boxes: Yes, I suppose it was sort of spectacular in its way, but the carnage was a little too obvious and expected to stay entertaining for long.
So where does all that point me this year?
The dominant storyline on the men's side is resurgent Rafa Nadal's pursuit of his tenth French Open championship. For me, that's interesting enough that it will guide much of the time I spend watching. After him, I'll watch his two most obvious rivals, Thiem and Djokovic. They're in the same half of the draw as Rafa (and the same quarter as each other), so there's kind of a void if I'm watching in anticipation of a certain match-up in the final. If I watch someone on the other side of the draw, it'll be dictated by how the tournament shakes up; because I really don't think Murray has it this year, there's no obvious choice ahead of time.
On the women's side, I'd written off pretty much everyone who isn't Venus Williams as being worth watching in the early rounds, because with the women's game being so inconsistent (its champions prefer the term "wide open"), there wasn't really any compelling storyline going into the tournament to guide my watching.
But thankfully, a worthwhile storyline arose on Friday, when Petra Kvitova held a press conference and announced to the surprise of everyone that her hand had healed sufficiently from the wounds she suffered when she was attacked in her home back in December that she was going to play in the French. No one is expecting her to go too terribly far--she hasn't played a competitive match since late last year, and anyway grass is her strongest surface. But still, after such a horrible event, and after the initial talk that she might never regain sufficient function in her hand to play competitively again, her early-round matches are clearly worth checking out this year, and also let's wish her well.