Paris — A French Open champion doesn’t often play his first match on Court 16, tucked behind Suzanne Lenglen stadium in a narrow strip that’s as far from the main entrance to Roland Garros as possible. It’s a place usually reserved for teenagers and fringe players — ever heard of Edouard Roger-Vasselin, Marcos Daniel, Anastasiya Yakimova, or Stephanie Cohen-Aloro? If the rain had not washed away most of the matches yesterday, these unlikely contenders would have begun, or concluded, this tournament in anonymity.

There would have been one misfit among them: Guillermo Canas, who is a real threat to win this year’s men’s title. Most tennis fans today recognize the 29-year-old Argentine. When a player beats Roger Federer two consecutive times on hard courts, as Canas did this year, people notice and commit the name to memory (Canas goes by Willy). The avid onlookers among us also might recall that he has twice reached the French Open quarterfinals, and that the four matches he has lost at Roland Garros since 2001 — including one to eventual champion Gaston Gaudio, in 2004, and another to eventual finalist Mariano Puerta, in 2005 — have lasted five sets.

What the world remembers best about Canas, however, is the 15-month drug suspension he served from June 2005 until September of last year. As much as Canas wants to win the French Open, he wants even more to show the world that he is not, and was not, a cheater.

Canas claims a tournament doctor mistakenly gave him a diuretic instead of a decongestant. The more time that passes, the more credible his story seems, and the more perverse his punishment. At the very least, it’s been proven that Canas did not intend to dope, that the substance did not aid his performance, and that his positive test was caused by medication given to him by mistake. Yet he remains guilty as far as doping authorities are concerned, and to the minds of many peers, who have seen several other Argentine players suspended for doping (Ivan Ljubicic, the players’ lead representative on the tour, suggested after a recent loss to Canas that tournaments should not grant wildcards to players who return from doping suspensions).

At a tournament in Acapulco, Mexico, two years ago, Canas tested positive for hydrochlorothiazide, a diuretic that can act as a masking agent for performance enhancing drugs. The ATP soon suspended him for two years; the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), in Lausanne, Switzerland, later reduced the suspension to 15 months after finding that Canas was not significantly at fault for having the substance in his system.

“No significant fault” does not mean “no fault,” and CAS has reduced numerous other suspensions in tennis and other sports under the same reasoning. Canas’s case, however, is unlike any other. In April of this year, the Supreme Court of Switzerland, which has jurisdiction to hear appeals from CAS, threw out the CAS ruling because it had disregarded Canas’s right to be heard. It was the first time the court had overturned a CAS ruling in more than 700 cases dating back to 1984.

CAS held another hearing earlier this year and listened to additional testimony. Last week it issued a second decision that affirmed the 15-month suspension, but the ruling was more an acknowledgment that CAS is obliged to enforce the strict World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA) rules that govern drug prosecutions, rather than an attempt at justice.

CAS concluded the following:

• Canas received a prescription for a decongestant but was accidentally given a prescription for Rofucal, a hypertension medication that had been prescribed for the coach of another player (Rofucal contains hydrochlorothiazide, a prohibited substance under the WADA code). The doctor denied filling a prescription for Canas, and it was not recorded in a tournament log book. However, witnesses testified that they saw Canas arrive at the tournament doctor’s office and leave with a prescription, and at least one other player, Juan Monaco, received a prescription for which no record was made.

• Canas did not read the label of the medication, assuming that he should not fear a drug authorized by a tournament doctor familiar with the tour’s anti-doping policies.

• The coach who was to receive Rofucal received something else.

• There was no evidence that Canas had intended to dope, on this occasion or on previous ones.

• Hydrochlorothiazide is not a performance-enhancing drug (Canas’s attorney, Cédric Aguet, argues that, if anything, the diuretic might hamper performance).

All this, yet CAS decided (and under the WADA code was probably required to decide) that Canas nonetheless deserved punishment because he hadn’t paid enough attention to what went into his body. “Appellant relied blindly on the system set up to take care of him at the tournament site, assuming that it was foolproof,” the CAS panel said. “This is clearly negligent.”

Anti-doping regulations are inflexible, often for good reason: The cases are difficult to prove, and almost all athletes who dope deny the charges while relying on preposterous excuses. In the end, though, Canas’s case shows that WADA, which is reviewing its regulations, needs to announce reforms later this year. Had Canas been adjudicated under the standards of criminal law, he would have been acquitted long ago. Instead, he missed the better part of two seasons because of his suspension and had to forfeit prize money and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills (in total, he’s lost more than a million dollars, not including the money he might have made had he continued to play; his attorney, who could not be reached yesterday, has said Canas may yet seek monetary damages).

Canas was indeed negligent, but he’s also innocent. In the field of anti-doping, innocence, rare as it is, doesn’t count for enough.

***

Neither one of them played particularly well, but Serena and Venus Williams are through to the second round. Serena has slimmed down a bit since the Australian Open, and despite committing lots of errors in her match Sunday, she moved well. Venus defeated 17-year-old French upstart Alize Cornet, 6–4, 6–3. The sisters could meet in the semifinals; Venus next faces American Ashley Harkleroad, who beat Aleksandra Wozniak, and the rain, yesterday.

tperrotta@nysun.com