Matches to watch, day 5

We're nearing the completion of our first (work) week of tennis. There was some excellent play yesterday, along with some less-than-ideal coverage from ESPN. I won't go into it further, but I was very disappointed in the way that the announcers treated the Williams sisters.

Anyway, the best match of the day yesterday was Marcos Baghdatis against David Ferrer. Ferrer started off the stronger of the two players, his ability to run down balls more effective than Baghdatis's ability to make shots. But after winning a tiebreak in the third set, Ferrer began to tire. Baghdatis won the next set, and then started to run away with the fifth. It looked like things might take a turn when Baggy cramped while serving for the match at 5-1 in the fifth, but he managed to pull himself together and get the W. An amazing comeback for a player who's back to his best. It was Ferrer's first loss from two-sets to love up. In fact, it was his first time even being taken to a fifth set after getting off to such a strong start!

The match between Juan Monaco and Michael Llodra was similar, with Llodra winning the first two sets, but fading after the third set tiebreak. It was all over, after that. The Tipsarevic-Haas match was also good, but much more up and down, as might be expected. Haas ended up to be the last one playing well, so he won the match.

In addition to these good matches, there were some excellent performances. Federer and the Williams sisters were dominating in their matches, as was Mikhail Youzhny, who backed up his marathon match against Richard Gasquet with a quick win the second round. Donald Young, even though he lost to Lleyton Hewitt in three, managed to stay with the former world number one for two sets, which is an encouraging result for the young American.

Looking ahead to the first Friday and the first set of third round matches, things are really starting to get intersting.

The most interesting matches on center court today feature Andy Roddick against the serving and volleying lefty Spaniard Feliciano Lopez, which is match that ought to feature quite a few aces. The other is Phillip Kohlschreiber against Rafael Nadal. The German upset Roddick at this stage two years ago, but it would be a massive upset for him to have a repeat performance against Nadal. Del Potro should have a lot less trouble against Florian Mayer than he did against Blake, unless that marathon match further hampered his injury. But the real contests are elsewhere on the grounds.

John Isner v. Gael Monfils - This is a magnificent contrast in styles, with one of the biggest servers in the game against one of the game's best returners. Monfils played the only match in which Ivo Karlovic was prevented from serving a single ace. But that was on clay, so we can expect Isner to get a few in. They've played a few times already and had some stupendous matches, but Isner is a player on the rise, and assuming he was able to make full use of his day off to recover, this one should be a battle.

Marin Cilic v. Stanislas Wawrinka - Cilic just notched his first win over Wawrinka in the Chennai final two weeks ago. Before that, the Swiss number two had won their first four meetings. Their most recent match went to two tough tiebreaks, and I expect that this should also be a tough one. Cilic did not play particularly well in his previous match against Tomic, so he'll need to get his form back to face the solid play and beautiful backhand of Stan the Man.

Ivan Ljubicic v. Ivo Karlovic - The number two and three Croatian players (after Cilic) are facing over in the second match on Hisense arena. Despite both players having been on tour for at least 10 years, they've only played one prior time, with Karlovic winning, but that was on grass. This should be a tough one.

And there are also three really tough women's matches on the docket, the two Belgians against tough Russian seeds, with Henin facing Kleybanova and Clijsters against Nadia Petrova. Everyone is expecting them to run into each other in the quarters, but they still have to win a couple more matches before that happens.

And there are two wayward world number ones who need to reassert their dominance. Dinara Safina, who is quietly playing very well so far, is facing an unseeded British player, while Jelena Jankovic will have to take out the second Bondarenko sister. The middle of the tournament is in some ways the best, the third and fourth rounds, because the players who have gotten this far have proven that they have good form, but there is plenty of action.