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World Tour Finals Day 2

2010-11-23T00:30:00.003-05:00

At last, we've had an interesting match at the World Tour Finals! After three more blow-out, straight matches in the first singles and the first two doubles matches, the night match between Andy Roddick and Rafael Nadal featured stellar tennis from both players. Roddick won the first set and was up a break in the second set, but Nadal picked up his game and the American couldn't quite stay level with the world number one from the back of the court. It was a very hard-fought match, and even though he didn't come away with the victory, Roddick has to be encouraged by the result.

He came into the event playing solid tennis, but he hadn't had a win against a top-ten player since Cincinnati, and his injury status was sort of unresolved. But he started the event playing the only player in his group that he has a losing record against, the reigning champion of the past three grand slams, and world number one. If he could have won that match, Roddick would have felt pretty confident about being able to run the table. Frankly, if he can play as well as he did against Nadal in his next two matches, Berdych doesn't have a shot, and Djokovic could be in trouble. Obviously, Roddick will be disappointed by the way his level dipped at key moments (serving up a minibreak in the second set tiebreak?) but overall, he was playing at a very high level. He forced the top player in the world to dig deep and play his very best tennis. Roddick's still in with a shout, which is the benefit of the round robin format.

Looking ahead to tomorrow, I think we may have our second and perhaps third tightly-contested matches, since the line-up is absolutely appetizing. First off, we have Federer vs. Murray, a rematch of the Australian Open, Toronto, and Shanghai finals, this year. Murray leads the overall head to head 8-5 and this year by 2-1. Both of them won their opening matches, so a victory tomorrow would all but seal their place in the semifinals. Not to mention the fact that Federer won their meeting at the finals last year (in London!) but Murray won the year before - there's a lot on the line, here. I think Murray probably played better in his opening round match, but his opponent also played worse. Murray has gotten the better of Federer more often than not lately (when it hasn't been in a Grand Slam, anyway) but Fed has been in better form. This one's too close to call.

But if there's a lot riding on the first match, there's even more riding on the second one. Robin Soderling and David Ferrer, who each lost their opening rounds, need a win to stay in contention. Not to mention, the pair met five times this year (the most meetings of any pair in 2010, leading up to the World Tour Finals) with Soderling leading 3-2, but Ferrer won two of the last three. Their five meetings were all since Wimbledon, too - which means they have had plenty of looks at each other's games in the past few months. Ferrer played better in his opening match, but Soderling was in great form two weeks ago in Paris. Again, this one is just too close to call.

I'm excited for both of these matches, and hoping that they can live up to the level of play that Roddick and Nadal set today.

World Tour Finals Day 1

2010-11-22T00:25:00.003-05:00

So the first day of action at the World Tour Finals was a bit of a dud, in all honesty.

Robin Soderling may have replaced Andy Murray as the world number four and won his first Masters Series shield last week, but he looked very much like the Soderling of a couple years ago who was mired around 25 in the world against Murray today. Honestly, I was really puzzled by Soderling's tactics today. It was always going to be tough for Soderling to hang from the back of the court with Murray, since the Scot can run down just about anything. But I thought that the solution for the Swede was just to bludgeon the ball with increasing force. That's been the formula for beating Murray in the past - Verdasco, Gonzalez, Berdych, Cilic, Querrey, even Soderling did it that way in their previous matches. The secret was out. But shockingly, today Robin's gameplan was to rush the net every chance he got, where he was either completely helpless on his volleys or a target for Murray to pass. It was a beatdown.

The second match, between Roger Federer and David Ferrer, looks like it had a similar scoreline, but it was actually a bit closer than that. Ferrer may have won fewer games, but that's in large part because he started off the match in absolutely awful form, spraying his forehand and unable to hit a first serve. He finally got into the match, but he was already down a double break, and once he blinked in the second set, it was pretty much over. Still, it was a much more encouraging performance from Ferrer than from Soderling - the Spaniard actually knew what he had to do in order to beat Federer, he just couldn't play at that high a level for long enough, and he missed a couple key points. Soderling just looked baffled and overawed by the situation.

Looking ahead to tomorrow's matches, it's very difficult for me to see Berdych upsetting Djokovic. Since the two played at Wimbledon, their levels of play could not have been any different. Berdych has been absolutely AWOL while Djokovic has found the best form he's been in since early 2008. Barring a miraculous revival from Berdych (or a grievous injury to Novak) there's no way that the Serb loses this one.

The night match tomorrow could be very interesting, but I think that the odds of letdown are pretty high here. Both players are in questionable condition here - Nadal skipped the last tournament of the year due to injury. We'll find out tomorrow whether he would have skipped that tournament regardless of where it fell in the calendar, or if he was just limiting his play in order to maximize his chances here at the year-end championships. Normally, that's not a tactic I'd associate with Nadal, but these championships are the biggest hole in Nadal resume by far. If he was just saving his strength for this event, the rest of the field could be in trouble. But if he's really hobbled and worn down by another long (if spectacular) season, then the other players in his group have a good shot.

Roddick's level of play may be just as much a question mark. He squeaked into the year-end championships after his year, which started out spectacularly, was sidetracked by a mild bout of mono and injury. All week, he's been saying that he's just glda to have qualified, and nobody's really talking about him as a contender. Either he's really not thinking he's at a level where he can win four to five matches against the best players in the game, or he's just flying under the radar.

We'll know a lot more about the answers to both of these questions after the match tomorrow. I'm very curious to see how it goes.

World Tour Finals Preview

2010-11-17T00:09:00.003-05:00

Before looking ahead to the Tour Finals in London, a quick look back at the culmination of the Paris Masters. Semifinal day was one of the best days of the entire tennis year, with Gael Monfils upsetting Roger Federer and Robin Soderling holding off a stern challenge from Michael Llodra. Both winners had to save match points, and both matches were settled in a third-set tiebreak. I considered it a great rebuke for all the commentators who said that the tennis season ended after the U.S. Open - this was a pretty exciting result. The final didn't quite live up to expectations, as Monfils was never really in it, even though he took the second set to a tiebreak. Kudos to Soderling for winning his first Masters Series shield - honestly, I'm surprised it took him that long. Monfils played amazing tennis but couldn't quite close the deal. I think next year could be big for him, though.

In any case, the draw came out today for the World Tour Finals, and I've read articles complaining both about the weakness of Federer's gorup and of Nadal's group. Personally, I think the two groups are relatively well-balanced, and should lead to some interesting match-ups.

Group A has top seed Rafael Nadal, U.S. Open finalist Novak Djokovic, Wimbledon finalist Tomas Berdych, and 8th-place finisher Andy Roddick. Despite the fact that Roddick is lowest-ranked player in the year-end finals, he's not the weakest player here. Tomas Berdych has been in terrible form since he made the final at Wimbledon, going 8-12 in that span, and only winning back-to-back matches two times. He also has a 1-6 record against the other players in his section this year, with the lone win coming over a lackluster Djokovic in the Wimbledon semis. It's tough to imagine Berdych making a run here, considering just how poorly he's played. Since beating Federer and Djokovic back to back, Berdych's biggest win has been against world number 37 Andrey Golubev. Barring a stunning reversal of fortune, he goes 0-3.

Roddick is an interesting question mark. Since the U.S. Open, Roddick has played stellar tennis - until he's had to play a top player. He lost an incredibly close match to Gael Monfils, then really underperformed in his matches against Federer and Soderling. Thankfully for Roddick, they're both in the other Round Robin group. Instead he gets Nadal and Djokovic - and Roddick is 1-0 against each of them this year. Unfortunately for Roddick, he beat both of them outdoors in North America. While Roddick will probably enjoy the conditions here as well, it remains to be seen if it will allow him to play his absolute best. Of course, if Roddick's serve is firing and he can play consistently enough to let loose on a few of his groundstrokes, he'll be tough to beat.

While Roddick's injury status is a question mark - he looked healthy enough in Paris, but he's been hampered through much of the year - it's nowhere near as up in the air as Rafael Nadal's. He's been having shoulder troubles this Fall, and even withdrew from the Paris Masters as a precaution. It will be interesting to see whether he skipped Paris simply because he was having injury difficulties, or if he was trying to maximize his chances at the year-end championships, where Nadal has never done well, historically. He's 4-7 at the event in three appearances. Shockingly, Nadal and Djokovic have only played once this year, while they played an astonishing seven times in 2009, and their matches are always close.

Djokovic has been in good form, but he may be more focused on the Davis Cup final, which follows pretty closely after the WTF in London. The biggest question will be whether or not Nadal is injured, but I think that the odds are pretty good that any two of Roddick, Nadal, and Djokovic will find their way out of this section of the draw. The odds are longest for Berdych, but he has wins over everybody in his section, at least...

That's not the case in Group B, where David Ferrer is 0-10 against Roger Federer. Of course, Robin Soderling, who is also in that group, once had that sort of record against Roger. He may have notched his first win there this year, but Federer is still 24-1 against those two players. The intriguing part of that section of the draw is that the fourth player is one of the few people who Federer has a losing record against: Andy Murray.

It's appropriate, first of all, that Robin Soderling and David Ferrer meet up in this round robin group. Ferrer, while not having any particularly big results this year, has won more matches than any player not named Nadal or Federer. And he and Soderling have faced off more often this season than any other pair of players, with Soderling leading the head-to-head 3-2 this year. In addition to this competitive match-up and Ferrer's abysmal record against Federer, Ferrer actually has a 3-1 record against Andy Murray, though all of those wins were on clay. As I noted, Ferrer has not had any particularly big wins this year, though he has been in five finals and won two titles. He's been a solid player, showing up every week, but that may not be enough to get him results when he's only player other top guys. On the other hand, in Ferrer's only other appearance here, he made the finals of the event, going 3-0 in Round Robin play. So who knows?

Soderling enters the event on the biggest high, having just won the biggest title of his career. He's also the only player entering the event on a winning streak, as a result. He made the semis here last year, beating Nadal and Djokovic along the way, before he lost to Juan Martin Del Potro. As noted above, Soderling has a terrible record against Federer, and while the Sod does love indoor courts, the conditions are about as different as could be compared to the slow, heavy courts at Roland Garros where the Swede got his one win against Roger. Soderling and Murray have a competitive match history, 2-2, though Soderling has won their only match this year, which was their first since 2006.

Murray's form coming into this tournament is interesting. He just dipped to number five, being superseded by Soderling in the rankings. He played well in the U.S. hardcourt swing prior to the U.S. Open, and then won in Shanghai, but it's been either feast or famine for Murray, who lost to Ljubicic and Monaco when he wasn't winning in China. He can regain the fourth spot in the rankings if he makes it further than Soderling - or even wins an extra match! - but he has a tricky section and he may finish the year at five if he cracks under the pressure of being in London. It's been both a blessing and a curse for Murray in the past.

And of course, Federer. Despite losing to Monfils in the Bercy semifinals, he very nearly won that match, and he had won the previous two tournaments heading into that match. He's 29-7 in the World Tour Finals, with four titles to his name. He hasn't won it since 2007, so he must be itching to get back in that winner's circle. Also, if he wants to reclaim the world number one ranking from Rafael Nadal (and he surely does) then a win here would be a great step towards that in 2011. I don't want to put too much weight on it, but Federer's results here could indicate whether he really can get close to the dominating form he showed at the peak of his career, or if those days are really behind him for good.

Lots on the line here.

Paris Masters Quarterfinals

2010-11-11T23:57:00.003-05:00

And that does it! The race to the year-end championships in London finished today, with one win and one loss. Andy Roddick started off the day with a victory over Ernests Gulbis, which gave him enough points to ensure that Jurgen Melzer was unable to qualify for the top eight, even if he were to run through the draw and win the whole tournament. After that Monfils recovered from a complete misstep of a drop shot that cost him the first set tiebreak to beat Fernando Verdasco, the last remaining challenger for one of those eight spots. With the other contenders out of the running, Berdych, Ferrer, and Roddick were all assured of qualifying for the elite group.

However, this didn't necessarily inspire them to stellar play. Tomas Berdych was up a set and in a second-set tiebreak against Nikolay Davydenko, when apparently the wheels just came off. After losing the tiebreak, Davydenko fed Berdych a bagel, improving his record to 9-1 against the Czech. And David Ferrer lost a tightly-contested (but not especially well-played match) against Jurgen Melzer, who ended up enjoying the conditions more than his baselining, dirtballing Spaniard opponent. Whether Melzer was disappointed or relieved by not having to worry about qualifying for London, one can't be sure, but it was still a good win over Ferrer, who's been playing good tennis in this last part of the season.

The other upset of the day was a complete and utter shocker. Michael Llodra came up with some absolutely inspired tennis to beat Novak Djokovic, the second seed and defending champion. Down 6-3 in the first set tiebreaker, Llodra played five of the best points of his career to come back win it, 8-6. And he kept that form up in the second set, breaking Djokovic twice while saving the three break points he faced. This was a huge match, because the pair will likely face off again in a couple weeks in the Davis Cup final. France may not have anyone in the year-end championship, but they do have a couple players who are finishing the year hot, which they'll need to be to go into a hostile Belgrade and win the Cup.

The other matches of the day were not terribly interesting. Federer beat Stepanek, and is starting to look a lot like his imperious old self again. Soderling wasn't too challenged by Wawrinka either, who was unable to finish his season by building on his big run at the U.S. Open. And Andy Murray was too steady for Cilic, who really outplayed the Scot for much of the match, but wilted in the pressure moments. The Croat looked ready to become a major player at the start of the year, but he has not finished strong. He has a ton of points to defend in the first few months of 2011 as well, so here's hoping he can find his form in the off-season.

Looking ahead to the quarterfinals, we continue to have some very appetizing match-ups. Jurgen Melzer plays sacrificial lamb to Roger Federer. They've played twice this year, both times in Grand Slams, and Federer has won 6 out of 6 sets. Only one even went to a tiebreak, the others were either 6-2 or 6-3. But Melzer is playing with house money at this point. He'll be going to London for doubles, so he'll certainly be signed up as an alternate in case one of the top eight guys is injured (still not sure how Rafa's shoulder and knees are doing...) and there's no reason for him to do anything but play his best tennis at this point. That said, that probably won't be enough to trouble Federer.

Federer's semifinal opponent may be too close to call at this point, but whoever it may be, we know they're nursing an injury. Gael Monfils was troubled by some knee problems in his victory over Verdasco (the crowd really helped him over the finish line) and Andy Murray's wrist was bothering him in his match against Nalbandian. Murray leads the head-to-head against Monfils, but the Frenchman loves playing in Paris, and he made the final here last year. The Parisian crowd doesn't seem to be too enamored of the petulant, fussy Scotsman, so expect them to be a major factor in the match, if it's close. Monfils needs to show up, though - if he plays his passive game, he'll be toast. Murray is just as a good a defender as he is, and on most days, Murray is better at turning defense into attack. Still, this should be a fun one.

In the bottom half of the draw, the sudden loss of Novak Djokovic makes the stronger semifinal significantly more important. Instead of the Djoker waiting in the semis, the winner of the Roddick-Soderling match will get either Nikolay Davydenko, who has been in poor form this part of the season, or Michael Llodra, who may have put on an astounding performance against Djokovic, but it seems unlikely that he'll be able to maintain that form. He lost to a player ranked 131st in the world at a French challenger just a few weeks ago.

So whoever wins between Andy Roddick and Robin Soderling will feel like they've got their ticket to the finals punched. The pair has already played twice this year in ATP Masters Series events, and Roddick came out on top both times, but they were both decided by extremely close margins. Soderling's record is strange - despite having made 2 Grand Slam finals, he's never made the final of a Masters event. There are two factors in play here that will make this match interesting: the first is that the court surface here is incredibly quick, which helps Roddick since Soderling takes huge swings at his groundstrokes, and the timing is much tougher on a fast surface. That's why Soderling excels on the slow clay of Roland Garros, the bounce gives him time to set up for his shots. But on the other hand, the other two times Roddick played Soderling were both outdoors and on U.S. soil. Of course, Roddick thrives in America, but being indoors helps Soderling on his serve, since he has one of the highest ball tosses in the game, and the lack of wind or sunlight helps him with that. Soderling actually beat Roddick indoors in France back in 2008. This is a real pick-em, with a lot on the line for both guys.

The other quarterfinal, between Davydenko and Llodra, will be interesting because nobody really expected either of these guys to make it thus far, much less further. But sometime, you can find your form at just the right time and see the draw open up for you a bit, and turn around a rather humdrum year. It will also be interesting to see if Llodra can continue to conjur up the kind of magic he displayed against Djokovic, which was really some stupendous stuff.

I like that the season is ending with a bang, and a lot of the top players still at their best. It often has happened in the past that the top guys lose their motivation in the final weeks of the season, which is why the Paris final has often had some surprising winners in the past, and why Federer has never gotten past the quarters here - before this year, anyway.

Paris Masters Round of 16

2010-11-10T18:19:00.002-05:00

Despite the fact that we're in the last week of the regular tennis year, a time where there are always some renewed calls for the shortening of the season, the tournament in Paris has been relatively free of big-name upsets. The top players don't seem particularly jaded or worn out, at least through the first two rounds. Out of the 16 seeds, only four have lost thus far, the highest of which was Mikhail Youzhny, who retired against Ernests Gulbis with an injury. In addition to the ninth-seeded Russian, Nicolas Almagro lost to Radek Stepanek, Ivan Ljubicic lost to Stan Wawrinka, and John Isner lost to Michael Llodra. Really, none of those are shocking results, and as a result of the dearth of surprising matches in the first couple rounds, the latter stages of the tournament are shaping up to be very interesting.

The top quarter features Roger Federer against Radek Stepanek, and they played as recently as last week in Basel. Unfortunately for Radek, he got blitzed in that match, and I don't see any reason why he won't suffer the same fate. The second match in this quarter, though, is potentially more interesting. Jurgen Melzer and David Ferrer are both aiming to qualify for the year-end championships, and while Melzer needs this match to keep his chances alive, Ferrer could lose this match and still have a good chance of making it to London. The Spaniard looked a little shaky against the Italian Fognini today, so he may be troubled by Melzer, who is still on a winning streak from his title in Vienna.

The other big match for the ATP Tour finals tomorrow is between Gael Monfils and Fernando Verdasco. If either Verdasco or Melzer loses, then Berdych qualifies automatically. If both lose, then Roddick, Ferrer, and Berdych have all sealed their spots. Verdasco was almost out of the tournament in the first round, down a set to Frenchman Arnaud Clement, before he reeled off nine straight games to win the match. That had more to do with Clement than Hot Sauce, though. Monfils also had trouble in his first round match, coming back from a double-break and 5-1 down in the first set to win it in two. Monfils will have to start a lot better against Fernando, but based on their recent form and the home field advantage, you have to learn towards Le Monf in this one.

The fourth match in the top half of the draw is a rematch of this year's Australian Open semifinal between Andy Murray and Marin Cilic. You have to say, considering how hot both of those players were at that point in the year, neither one had the success they might have expected this season. Cilic has been playing quite poorly since as far back as the clay-court swing, showing none of the firepower he demonstrated at the end of last year and the start of this one. Andy Murray just got through a very tough second-round match against David Nalbandian, who is frankly playing better tennis than the Croat these days. It'd be tough for Cilic to upset Murray again, even though he showed he has the potential to play that well when he trounced the Scot in last year's U.S. Open. He hasn't been able to play that level of tennis lately.

In the bottom half, Andy Roddick gets another early start - playing at 10:30 in the morning for the second straight day. It certainly didn't bother him in his match against Jarkko Nieminen, and I don't expect it should affect him much against Gulbis. The Latvian is another player who is capable of beating Roddick - of beating anybody, really - but he hasn't been at his best lately. Gulbis will have to play better tennis than he's played since the French Open, or hope that Roddick's serve isn't firing tomorrow. At least one of those things will have to happen for Ernie to hope to spoil the American's bid for another appearance at the year-end championships.

Roddick or Gulbis will probably be playing Robin Soderling in the quarterfinals, unless Stanislas Wawrinka can pull off an upset. The Swiss number two looked to be poised for a career resurgence at the U.S. Open, where he blew Andy Murray off the court, finished the campaign of the last American standing, and made his first career grand slam quarterfinal. Since then, he's gone 4-3, but he has lost to Federer, Nadal, and Monfils, so those were tough matches. But Wawrinka needs to end the season with another big win under his belt under the wing of new coach Peter Lundgren. Soderling might just be that scalp. That's going to be an interesting one.

Novak Djokovic has the unenviable task of playing one of the two remaining Frenchmen in Paris, as Michael Llodra upset John Isner, who was probably ready to end his season and pay attention to some NCAA football. Djokovic won this title last year, so he has a lot of points to defend, and has been playing solid tennis since the U.S. Open, since the only person he's lost to in that time was Roger Federer. Tough luck for Llodra, but this match could be an interesting preview of the second singles rubber at the Davis Cup final in a couple weeks. Both of these players will be looking to learn as much about their opponents as possible tomorrow, in preparation for that tie.

The last Round of 16 match is another interesting one. Tomas Berdych plays Nikolay Davydenko. Berdych is the higher-ranked player, but the question of who's in better form is really a race to the bottom. Berdych hasn't made a tournament semifinal since Wimbledon, and Davydenko hasn't made one since Rotterdam, back in February! But Davydenko owns the Czech in the head-to-head, winning 8 of their 9 matches, and his only loss came at Wimbledon, where Davydenko could lose to just about anybody. I don't know who to lean towards in this one, but if Berdych loses, he won't have much confidence heading into the year-end championships.

Paris Masters Preview and Week 44 Look Back

2010-11-07T20:54:00.004-05:00

We had a pair of hometown winners this week, as Roger Federer beat Novak Djokovic in Basel and David Ferrer beat surprise finalist and lucky loser Marcel Granollers in Valencia. Once the finals were set, those are the results we might have expected, but the semifinals had a couple of surprises.

The Roddick-Federer match in the semis looked like it would be an appetizing match-up, but unfortunately, Andy Roddick didn't really show up for the match. He played one of the poorest matches I've seen him play since he lost to Gilles Simon while suffering from mono this summer. He started the match serving at about 30%, and while he did improve that percentage as the match went on, his serve was never really on. And for Roddick, it's hard for him to win a match against anyone when that shot isn't working, and it's impossible for him to do it against Federer, even when Roger doesn't have to do anything special. That's really the worst possible result for Roddick - if he had lost but played a respectable match, he could take pride in that, but losing the match due to his own poor standard of play is not going to help build his confidence going into the last weeks of the season.

David Ferrer played Robin Soderling in the Valencia semis for the fifth time this year, and he won for the second time. That was a bit of a surprise, but Marcel Granollers' dismissal of Gilles Simon was more of a shock. Granollers had lost to Teymuraz Gabashvili in the qualifying draw, but got into the main tournament thanks to a withdrawal. He then won three matches against higher-ranked players and made it to the final.

As a result of the action this week, there weren't any major moves on the road to the finals in London. There's one week of regular action left, and here's how it stands. The likeliest outcome is that the current top 8 players will be the 8 who make it to the finals. The only way that Berdych (currently ranked 6th) doesn't make it is if either Youzhny or Verdasco wins the tournament and Roddick and Ferrer pass him, which would mean Roddick would have to make the semis and Ferrer would have to make at least the second round, while Berdych doesn't even win a match. The odds are good for Berdych.

Roddick and Ferrer are also in good shape, but they're not as sure bets. Melzer could bump Roddick if the Austrian wins the tournament and Roddick doesn't get any points, Youzhny would need to make the final, and Verdasco could do it by making the semis. Ferrer would need Verdasco to make the final or Youzhny to win. Considering Verdasco's form lately and Youzhny's back injury, I think the top 8 players are safe bets. Youzhny would need to get through Roddick and Verdasco would need to get through Gael Monfils and Andy Murray. Melzer would need to get through Ferrer and Federer, the winners of both of last week's tournaments. But two years ago, Tsonga needed to win the tournament to make the finals, and he played the second-best tournament of his life to do it. So anything can happen.

Looking at the other players involved in the BNP Paribas Masters. The most interesting thing is Nadal's withdrawal from the tournament - I think it may be because the Spaniard wants to make a better showing at the year-end tournament, where he has never performed well. That's one of the few remaining holes in his resume, so he may be skipping Paris to be fresher for London. Or he could really be on the verge of ending his season, which wouldn't shock me much either.

As a result, Federer is the top seed and favorite to win the tournament, since he's now on a nine match and two-tournament winning streak. As if that weren't enough, he has a pretty clear path to the semifinals. He opens against either Mahut or Gasquet, followed by Nicolas Almagro and then either Melzer or Ferrer. There's nobody in that quarter than can bother Federer, these days.

But his potential semifinal opponent, Andy Murray, has beaten him in two of their three meetings, this year. The Scot has an interesting draw, finding David Nalbandian or Marcel Granollers in his second-round match. Of course, he trounced Nalbandian earlier this year, so that may not be as exciting as it looks at first glance. After that, he could get either Cilic or one of two Ukrainian players. In the quarters, he'll probably have Verdasco or Monfils, who is now the top Frenchman in the tournament with Tsonga's injury-induced withdrawal.

The third quarter is an interesting one - Andy Roddick has the most to play for in the quarter, for sure. He'll open against either Xavier Malisse or a hot Jarkko Nieminen, and then he'll have either Gulbis or Youzhny, which is going to be a big match for two potential players in London. The other half of that quarter has Robin Soderling and Ivan Ljubicic, as well as Stan Wawrinka and Gilles Simon. You have to favor Soderling to come through, but there aren't really any weak spots there. Roddick has won both of their matches so far this year, so he can't be too upset about his draw.

Roddick also has to like that his most likely semifinal opponent is Novak Djokovic, against whom Roddick has played exceptionally well lately. Djokovic has another tough quarter, since it has Berdych, Isner, and Davydenko in it. In addition, Djokovic has to play either Monaco or Sam Querrey in his first round. Isner could open against Llodra - the pair played an epic match two weeks ago in Montpellier. The third round match between Berdych and Davydenko will be a big one for both players, assuming Davydenko can get past either Bellucci or Kohlschreiber.

There's still lots of action left in this last week of the regular season.

Week 44 Semifinals

2010-11-06T02:25:00.002-04:00

We're through to the final four in both of the ATP tournaments taking place this week, and there are some very appetizing match-ups. Quarterfinals day was maybe lacking some of the excitement that it looked like it might have had, but there was still some amazing tennis on display.

Out of the eight matches taking place today, only two were not won in straight sets. Argentine Juan Monaco faltered against Lucky Loser Marcel Granollers, who continues his campaign as one of the two remaining Spaniards in Valencia. That's a big win for Granollers, who was 17-20 on the year coming into this tournament. Unfortunately, I don't think he can pull of that magic again in the semis, as he faces Gilles Simon, who ousted Nikolay Davydenko in three - though it should have only taken two. Davydenko played brilliantly for intervals, but then he would completely lose his way. In the end, Simon was just too steady.

The other semifinal may not go terribly well for the other remaining Spaniard, David Ferrer, who is rewarded for his straight sets defeat of Andreas Seppi with the dominant player of the tournament thus far, Robin Soderling, who ousted Gael Monfils as if it were no small feat. It was strong play from Soderling, but honestly, Monfils didn't really show up for this match, which is a shame. Having just won a tournament last week and summarily dismissed Stanislas Wawrinka in the previous round, I was hopeful that Monfils had reached a new level in his career, but the quality of his play dropped precipitously in the quarterfinals. I expect Ferrer will be a sterner test for the Swede, but Soderling leads their head-head 8-3, including winning 3 out of 4 matches played this year.

Ferrer is in a tricky situation, which is that he needs to accumulate points to cement his place in the year-end-championships, but he doesn't want to exhaust himself before next week's tournament in Paris, where there are even more points on offer. A loss here wouldn't be the end of the world. Another player who is in the exact same boat is Andy Roddick, who wishes he was merely 3-8 against his semifinal opponent. But no, the American faces off against his greatest nemesis and hometown hero Roger Federer, against whom Roddick is a dismal 2-19. This is their first meeting since the epic Wimbledon final in July of 2009, and also the site of their very first meeting way back in 2001. Federer won that one in a third set tiebreak, and it may be a similar result tomorrow. A win for Roddick would be huge, but a loss isn't going to hurt his spirit too much - he came into this week without any serious expectations, considering his layoff, and he has played some great tennis. If he gets an extra day to get to France for the Paris Masters and get himself ready for that tournament, that's just fine. And really, it's tough to bet on the guy with a 2-19 record.

The final semi features a rematch of one of the most significant early round matches at the U.S. Open - Serb Novak Djokovic played his junior countryman Viktor Troicki and looked out of it in the very first round, down a break in a decisive set, and with a point to go down a double break. Djokovic managed to claw his way back to win the match and ultimately go on to beat Federer in the semis and make the final. Since then, Troicki won the first tournament of his career. Djokovic, of course, is trying to defend the title he won here last year. I expect that Novak will win this one, but it could be tricky, if Troicki brings his best stuff to the court.

Despite all the other matches going on tomorrow, the biggest question of the day will be whether Roddick can maybe pull of that magical upset and get another notch on his belt against Federer. It's not a decisive match for either player in terms of career trajectories, but a win would be a huge boost for Andy. For Federer, it probably won't affect him too much either way, and Roddick won't be surprised if he comes up second best. But a win could Roddick all kinds of momentum heading into the year's final weeks. After a very up-and-down year, it would be great to end on a high note.

Week 44 Quarterfinals

2010-11-05T01:44:00.002-04:00

Interesting results so far in this penultimate week of regular ATP action. Since it's the end of the season, some players are battered and bruised - before play even started, four of the sixteen seeds withdrew because of injury or exhaustion: Melzer, Youzhny, Tsonga, and Ljubicic. Three of them had been in finals just a few days prior, so it shouldn't be too surprising. Tsonga's season is over with a knee injury, so you can't blame him for pulling out, and Youzhny was hampered by a back problem in his loss in the final. But all three of them were in the running for the year-end finals in London, so it's a shame they couldn't try to make a big push.

As for that run-up to London, there were quite a few players who were still in the running who did make it to play this week. Fernando Verdasco, just on the verge of qualifying in ninth place, won one match before he got trounced by Gilles Simon. He's now won a single match since he made the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open, and unless he has a sharp turnaround in form and gets to at least the quarters in next week's masters event, it's almost certain that he'll miss out. The top contender who hadn't yet clinched his spot, Tomas Berdych, continued a similar vein of bad play in his loss to Tobias Kamke, but thanks to the poor performance of the other contenders, I am pretty confident that he'll stumble into the championships all the same. Marin Cilic also had a possibility of making the finals, but he lost to Nalbandian today, and he's done.

The players in seventh and eighth, the last two spots that haven't been decided, are the only ones doing well. David Ferrer is in to the quarterfinals in Valencia, while Andy Roddick is at the same stage in Basel. Both are showing good form, and should head into the finals with some momentum. It's almost a shame that there was so much chance for excitement as we come down to the wire, but it's all but assured at this point that the players who were in the top eight a month or so ago will remain in those positions and get to the final. Not a lot of movement in those top spots in the points race.

Anyway, the quarterfinals on offer tomorrow are really extremely strong, consider these are merely 500-level tournaments. It shows the depth of the draws, as well as the fact that not all of the top players run out of gas as the season winds down. In Basel, Roger Federer gets the tricky Czech Radek Stepanek - the match would have been potentially tough a year or two ago, but Stepanek has slowed down a lot this year, and he hasn't been able to frustrate opponents the way he used to. Particularly in his hometown tournament, you can expect Federer to get through without too much trouble.

Who Federer's opponent will be is not so clear, though. Andy Roddick plays David Nalbandian for a shot at Federer in the semis, and that's a popcorn match. Who can forget the five-set thriller they played way back in the 2003 U.S. Open semifinals, where Roddick saved a match point before he went on to win the title? Now Roddick is much higher ranked than Nalby coming into the event, but Nalbandian is still capable of playing well enough to beat just about anybody, and the strength of his return matches up well against Roddick's biggest asset, his serve. I lean towards Roddick here, but it could go either way.

In the bottom half of the draw, Viktor Troicki plays Richard Gasquet, while Novak Djokovic plays Robin Haase, who is coming back from an injury layoff. Best of luck to the young Dutch player, but his campaign ends against Djokovic, who looked awesome against Jarkko Nieminen. The other quarter is tougher to call, though. Troicki and Gasquet are both very strong players just getting into the middle stage of their careers, and while Gasuqet is trying to get back to the level he was at a few years ago, Troicki is playing some of the best he's ever played, just now starting to live up to his potential. This one could go either way.

In Valencia, there are three Spaniards left, and it's a shame that two of them have to play each other. Juan Monaco needs to follow up the biggest win he's had in a long time when he ousted Andy Murray in the second round. He'll play lucky loser Granollers, and he should get through that one. The other Spaniard, David Ferrer, gets Italian Andreas Seppi, and he should win that one with ease. The other two semis, though, are much more interesting.

Gilles Simon, who ousted Fernando Verdasco, gets another struggling top player in Nikolay Davydenko. The two have similar games, though Davydenko does a bit more heavy hitting and Simon does a bit more running, they're both brutal counterpunchers. Neither player has been at their best this year, but a good finish to this season could set the stage for a renewed campaign in 2011. I lean towards Simon based on recent form, but Davydenko is a very dangerous player. The final quarterfinal is a thriller - Gael Monfils, who is on one of the longest winning streaks of his career, gets second seed Robin Soderling after a thorough dismantling of a dangerous opponent in Stan Wawrinka. I actually lean towards Monfils pulling the upset, as he's been showing some very encouraging signs of a new level of seriousness in his approach to his tennis.

In any case, tomorrow looks to be an excellent day of tennis. I'm eager to see how it plays out.

Week 43 Wrap-Up and Week 44 Preview

2010-11-01T01:00:00.004-04:00

We had four finals take place today, and all but one went three sets. Shockingly, the one that was a straight-set victory was the one that featured a first-time finalist upsetting a top ten player and multiple title winner already this year. Mikhail Youzhny was in his fifth final of 2010, while Kukushkin was just in the first of his career. However, Kukushkin got a bit lucky, because the top seed had just played three consecutive three set matches, and he had saved match points in the last two. No matter how tough you are, that will wear on a player. Youzhny must have been drained in losing the final 6-2, 7-6(2). A great showing for the other Mikhail (the first final this year between players who share the same name, by the way), who jumps up 30 spots in the ranking.

The other finals were all close, but none was closer than the all-Austrian final between Jurgen Melzer and Andreas Haider-Maurer. Despite having a great year and enjoying his career high ranking, Melzer had yet to win a title this year, and he was defending points from a victory in last year's Vienna tournament. On the other hand, Haider-Maurer had barely played in any top tier tournaments in his career, and he only made it into the tournament as a lucky loser. He won the first set in an incredibly tight tiebreak, then lost the second set in another tiebreak. After that, the veteran's experience won out. But Haider-Maurer will be back - his play was really a revelation, this week.

In France, Gael Monfils played Ivan Ljubicic. Neither player has a winning record in finals, but the Frenchman's record was just abysmal. He was 2-9 coming in to this week, but the advantage of the hometown crowd allowed him to overcome a short patch of sub-standard play and win the match and the title in three sets. Kudos to Monfils - he could really be a different caliber of player if he could improve his record in these sorts of big, decisive matches.

Of course, the biggest final of the week was between Kim Clijsters and year-end number one Caroline Wozniacki. It would have been the biggest title of Wozniacki's career, but it wasn't going to happen. Kim has won the year-end title twice before, and she won in a hard-fought match, but her victory never really seemed to be in doubt. Wozniacki raised her level of play to come back from being down 4-1 in the secon set to win it 7-5, but she couldn't keep it up and Clijsters won in the third. It's a bit of a disappointing end to the season for Caroline, but consider her lack of a major win (and her less-than-stellar results against the top players) means that despite her number one ranking, she has a lot of room to improve her results next year. And at age 20, there's no reason she can't do just that.

Looking ahead to next week, we have a pair of 500-level tournaments taking place in Valencia, Spain and Basel, Switzerland. Since this the second-last week of regular ATP action for the season, the fields are stacked. Seventeen of the world's top 20 players are in action. The only ones missing are Marcos Baghdatis, who withdraw from Basel, Mardy Fish, whose season ended a couple weeks ago with injury, and Rafael Nadal - and really, what does he need with another 500 tournament?

It's tough to say which draw is tougher - both of them are filled with dangerous players, and there are a lot of first-round matches that could just as well be quarterfinals. It's also true that this is crunch time for the seven players who have a shot at grabbing one of the three remaining spots in the year-end championships.

In Valencia, Andy Murray is the top seed, but he's certainly not guaranteed an easy path to the final. He opens against Feliciano Lopez, and then gets Juan Monaco, the only player to have already played his first-round match. Getting through that, he'll probably get Tsonga or Tursunov in the quarterfinals - Tsonga is one of the players who has an outside shot of making the year-end championships, but he'll need really good runs this week and next. His second-round match against Tursunov is one to look forward to, it it comes to pass, as an indicator of Tsonga's chances at making a run and whether or not Tursunov is really back to his old self again.

Fernando Verdasco is currently ninth in the race for the year-end championships, but he hasn't won a match since the U.S. Open. He opens against American qualifier Michael Russell, which is a tricky one but should be winnable. After that, it only gets tougher, as he'll get either Sergiy Stakhovsky or Gilles Simon in the second round, but then things get a bit easier - it'll be either Davydenko or Kohlschreiber, neither of whom have been in great form recently.

The next quarter has two players who are trying to make the ATP tour finals, with Youzhny and Ferrer both vying for spots. The Russian is in a bit of trouble, having played through to the final in St. Petersburg and then needing to travel before play starts up, but his section isn't too tricky until he might find himself up against Ferrer in the quarters. The only other potential spoilers in that section are Arnaud clement and (maybe) Teymuraz Gabashvili, though Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, who beat Nadal during the Asian swing, opens against Ferrer, as well.

The last quarter has Gael Monfils and Robing Soderling, as well as Stan Wawrinka and Nicolas Almagro. Lots of heavy hitting in this section, for sure. Any of those four guys could find their way through to the semifinals, but each of them has a relatively easy first round. There's no shortage of fireworks in this draw, as you can see.

But there may actually be even more in Basel, if you can believe it. Of course, Roger Federer is the top seed, and he opens against young Ukrainian player Alexandr Dolgopolov. And after that, he gets either Tipsarevic or Istomin. Now none of those guys are top players, but they all have the potential to hit with heavyweights on any given day. In the quarters, he may get either Stepanek or (more likely) Jurgen Melzer. Fed has made the final here for the past four years, and I wouldn't be shocked if he made a run again.

The player most likely to stand in his way (or at least hope to) is probably Andy Roddick, who is hoping he's fully recovered from the injury that shortened his campaign during the Asian swing. He opens against Sam Querrey, who has only won a single match since the U.S. Open, but he did beat Roddick the last time they played. After that, Roddick could play either Belgian vet Xavier Malisse or up-and-coming big hitter Andry Golubev. The other section of Roddick's quarter may have Cilic as the top seed, but he hasn't been playing like it. You have to think that the favorite to get through to be Roddick's quarterfinal opponent (assuming he lives up to his seeding) is David Nalbandian.

The third quarter in Basel has Ljubicic, last week's losing finalist in Montpellier, Florian Mayer, who lost to Federer in the Stockholm final, Troicki, who just won his first career title, and Michael Berrer, who was a semifinalist in Vienna. As if that wasn't enough, it also has Richard Gasquet and Tomas Berdych. The Czech player is next in line to qualify for the year-end championships, but he also is in pretty poor form, since he hasn't won more than two consecutive matches since he lost in the Wimbledon final. He doesn't need many wins to secure his spot in the finals, but he's going to need a couple this week and next in order not to slide out of the top eight. He gets lucky loser Tobias Kamke as a first round, which is about as good as he could hope for. Gasquet in the second round is a trickier ask...

The final quarter of the draw has what could be the most appetizing first-round match of the week. Second-seed Novak Djokovic opens against Ernests Gulbis, which would have been a blockbuster in the Spring, but Ernests has been having trouble recently, while Djokovic has been playing some of his best tennis. I think the Djokovic may have more trouble with his second round match against (in all likelihood) Jarkko Nieminen, who has been enjoying a rich vein of form at the end of the season. Meanwhile, he could get John Isner in the quarterfinals, if Isner can get past French net rusher Michael Llodra. That should be a fun one to see, too.

As you can see, there's a lot going on this week, and a lot on the line for some of the players involved. I'm excited to see how it plays out!

Week 43 Semifinals

2010-10-30T01:48:00.003-04:00

There was one big piece of news in the tennis world, today: the shocking retirement of Elena Dementieva, who played her last WTA match against Francesca Schiavone and lost. It's really a shame to see her go, but on one level, I can understand - her year was plagued with injuries, and at age 29, it's possible that her lingering conditions are only going to get worse, not better, as time goes on. It also sounded like she was interested in settling down and having a baby, which is completely understandable. Finally, she didn't want to slide down in the rankings and be struggling to qualify for entry into tournaments. All of this is commendable, but I'm still sad to see her go. She was a great player to watch when she was on - even though her serving woes and mental fragility in big moments could also make her bad days tough to endure. Still, she was an absolute class act and had the cleanest ground strokes you could ever hope to see. She'll be missed, and I wish her all the best in her future endeavors. As a player who also seemed to be a fan of the sport, I wouldn't be surprised if she stayed near to the game in some capacity, once she's had a little time away.

While that may have been all that was on people's minds today, there was also some pretty good tennis. Though not in Doha, where none of the matches had any significance regarding who would make it to the semifinals, and they were basically played that way. On the other hand, the quarterfinals of the men's events taking place this week had some excellent action. Nine of the 12 matches went three sets, and three of them ended in decisive-set tiebreaks.

There were some big upsets today. Albert Montanes benefited from Nikolay Davydenko's continued poor run of form, as the Russian lost to the Spaniard in second and third set tiebreaks, having won the first set 6-3. Davy's year is pretty much over, and he's got to be looking to rebuild next season. After he fails to defend his ranking points from the year-end championships last year, his ranking is going to drop like a stone. I'm not sure where he'll end up, but he'll probably be the farthest he's been from the top ten in a long while.

Otherwise, in Monpellier, the favorites came out on top. Monfils ended up being too strong for John Isner. The American took the first set after breaking Monfils in an early moment of lackadaisical play from Monfils, but after that, it was all business. In the end, Monfils returning was stronger than Isner's serving power. The same could not be said for Gilles Simon or Jarkko Nieminen, who both lost to big-serving, big-hitting players as well. Simon stole the second set from JW Tsonga by running away with the tiebreak 7-0, but Tsonga recovered in the third set. His weakest passage of play was in the second set tiebreak, when he just went on walkabout. Very strange from a player with a good record in tiebreaks, generally. Nieminen, on the other hand, lost a very tight third-set tiebreak to Ivan Ljubicic after a pair of calls from the umpire failed to go his way - one a serve from Ljubicic that was probably out by the ump declined to overrule, and another a ball from the Finn that was very close (and farther away from the umpire's chair) which he called out. Tough break for Jarkko, but he's playing well and should be encouraged by how he's finishing the season.

The semifinals here are Ljubicic-Montanes and Monfils-Tsonga. I have to say that I think whoever wins between Monfils and Tsonga will win in the final, no matter who comes through between Ljubicic and Montanes. Both of these guys love playing in France, they're both showmen, and that combined with their natural talent should be enough to get them the championship.

In Vienna, the most anticipated match-up of the day fizzled out, but at least it did so in the way that was preferable for the tournament. Jurgen Melzer automatically advanced when Kohlschreiber withdrew with injury. Surprisingly, he's joined in the semifinals by lucky loser Andreas Haider-Maurer, who demolished second seed Marin Cilic today. It was an impressive performance from the young (well, young in terms of experience) Austrian. He benefited even more when Marcos Baghdatis was surprisingly beaten by German journeyman Michael Berrer. That's a winnable semifinal for Andreas, and if Melzer can get past Nicolas Almagro, we could have an all-Austrian final in Vienna. That would be spectacular for the tournament. I know that I and the tournament organizers will be keeping our fingers crossed for the hometown boys.

Unfortunately, there's no hope for a similar final in St. Petersburg, though one of the semis is an all Russian affair. In fact, that's probably the more important semifinal, as Mikhail Youzhny and Dmitry Tursunov are both experienced players with multiple titles on their belt, while both of their potential opponents in the other semifinal, Mikhail Kukushkin and Ilya Marchenko, are vying for their first tour-level final appearance. I like Youzhny to win this match, but I'm rooting for Tursunov, who is recovering from ankle surgery. He's such a character, it would be fun to have him in the mix again next year.

Still lots of great action yet to come this weekend, as the semifinals in Doha start tomorrow as well. Now things really count, as the elimination matches begin. Clijsters plays Stosur and Zvonareva plays Wozniacki, which are both coincidentally rematches from this year's U.S. Open! All four of these players have been playing exceptional tennis this week, but Zvonareva is the only one who didn't drop a match in round robin play. It's tough to know what to expect tomorrow, but it should be fun to watch.

Week 43 Quarterfinals

2010-10-29T01:12:00.002-04:00

While we're in a relatively minor (in terms of importance to the whole year) week for the ATP, but the end-of-year WTA championships in Doha are a very big deal. Up until today, the year-end number one ranking was still up for grabs, with either Caroline Wozniacki or Vera Zvonareva capable of snagging the spot. The first two days of action were relatively uneventful, with six straight set victories. But today, the level of play just skyrocketed, and all three matches featured some of the best play that we've seen all year on the WTA tour. Elena Dementieva upset Sam Stosur in a third set tiebreak, after Elena had been whipped by Wozniacki by the score of 6-1, 6-1. Good showing by Dementieva, even though she was mathematically eliminated from moving past the round robin stage, once Wozniacki came back from dropping the first set to Francesca Schiavone in order to win the second and third by wide margins, even though it still seemed tight. The last match was between Kim Clijsters and Azarenka, and while it was tightly-contested for the first two sets, in the end the heat was too much for the Belarussian, and Azarenka faded in the third. All the same, everyone involved played spectacular tennis today, truly worthy of the importance of the event. I'm encouraged for the next few days of action.

While the stakes weren't quite so high elsewhere, the action was still quite exciting. There were two amazing comebacks at the Open Sud de France, where Nalbandian served for the match twice against Gilles Simon, but still ended up losing. It was less good news for the French when Richard Gasquet dropped a similar sort of lead against Jarkko Nieminen, only to lose in the end. In reward, Simon gets to play JW Tsonga and Nieminen gets Ivan Ljubicic. Really, all of the quarters in France are pretty strong. The other two feature John Isner and Gael Monfils, as well as top seed Davydenko against Albert Montanes. All of those matches could go pretty much either way.

Vienna has the most seeds left standing, which also leads to some interesting matches. Top seed Jurgen Melzer gets Kohlschreiber, Almagro gets Chela (that really seems like a clay-court quarterfinal), Baghdatis gets German Michael Berrer, and Marin Cilic gets the young Austrian Andreas Haider-Maurer. I lean towards all four top seeds coming through here, though Haider-Maurer has an outside chance of an upset against Cilic, who has not been in great form. And Kohlschreiber can play well enough to beat almost anybody on the right day. But I know the Austrian crowd wants to see both Melzer and Haider-Maurer through. There's not a lot to be excited about in terms of Austrian tennis, these days.

While there are only three seeds left in St. Petersburg, the remaining field is probably the weakest. Top seed Mikhail Youzhny was tested by the young Russian player Donskoy, but he came through in the end. I wouldn't be surprised if we see Donskoy again, though. He gets Victor Hanescu in the quarters, which should be a fairly straightforward win since they're not on clay. The best quarterfinal is probably between two players on opposite ends of their careers - Dmitry Tursunov is on the comeback trail from ankle surgery, while Dolgopolov is just trying to establish himself as a contender for these sorts of tournaments. In the other quarters, Tipsarevic faces Kukushkin and Becker faces Marchenko. I like Becker and Tipsy in those matches.

WTA Doha Preview

2010-10-25T23:03:00.003-04:00

Tomorrow, the women's year-end championship tournament starts in Doha. This is going to be an interesting tournament, because a number of the big-name players aren't present: Maria Sharapova, Justine Henin, and both Williams sisters are not present. With the draws that we're seeing, combined with the odd sorts of form that the players involved have been exhibiting at the end of the year, this is really going to be a toss-up in terms of who comes out on top. It's also an open question as to what level of tennis we can expect this week. It should be interesting to see.

The first group, despite having Caroline Wozniacki, the current world number one, is arguably the weaker group. While she is an excellent player, "Sunshine" Wozniacki does not have a very good record against the other top players in the game, and those are the only ones she's going to be facing this week. Her group also has French Open champion Francesca Schiavone and Sam Stosur - who have pretty much sat out the second half of the season, considering their lack of results since the French Open. Stosur did look sharp at the U.S. Open, where she lost a match to Kim Clijsters in the quarters that she probably should have won, but neither one has ever played in the year-end championships before. The fourth player in that group is Elena Dementieva, who is appearing here for the 10th time, but her record here is abysmal, as she's gone 6-18. It's tough to pick out of this group - all four players have their reasons to choke, so I don't know if I can call who's going to come through.

On the other side, things are a bit tougher. Kim Clijsters is the only player to have won the year-end championships before, and she's done it twice! Vera Zvonareva, also in this group, has made it to the final before, which is something of an achievement. But Vera has shown she still has a tendency to choke in pressure situations, so it's tough to back her to go all the way. Jelena Jankovic has ended her year pretty poorly, as she hasn't even made the quarterfinals in any event since the French Open. The fourth player in this group, Victoria Azarenka, is something of a wildcard. She played some excellent tennis in winning the last tournament of the year, but she didn't have to play anyone of consequence on the way. She could make some noise, though.

I have no real sense of how this tournament could play out - I think it's just about as likely that we'll get an established player like Kim Clijsters tearing through her opponents and winning the title as a relatively undistinguished player showing her best stuff. It should be fun to watch in the meantime, but I can't make any predictions.

Week 42 Wrap-up and Week 43 Preview

2010-10-24T21:02:00.004-04:00

Things went about as expected in the finals this week. Roger Federer handled a spirited challenge from German Florian Mayer without too much difficulty, equaling Pete Sampras's record of total titles won in the process, while Viktor Troicki managed to outlast a frustrated Marcos Baghdatis to claim his maiden title in Moscow. Baggy got extremely upset with some questionable line calls, even going so far as to spit at an line judge. Now he's justified in getting upset, but that's just not okay. Here's hoping that Moscow will have Hawkeye next year, and this won't be a problem.

As for Federer, kudos for reaching that milestone in your career, but with the sort of field he had to deal with in Stockholm, coupled with underperforming fellow seeds, it would have been pretty sad if he couldn't clinch this one. Florian Mayer in the final? Can't really ask for a better opponent when you're going for a record like that. But it also moves Federer squarely into second place in terms of matches won over the course of the year, even though he's still 14 match wins behind Nadal, and four titles, as well.

Looking ahead to next week, the fields are a little bit sparser. We're in the home stretch of the tournament calendar now, with only three weeks of regular action left in the season. So some players are scrambling to get all the action they can, trying to accumulate points and prize moeny before the off-season, while others are waiting to make a big push at next week's pair of 500 tournaments or the season-ending Masters in Paris. Still others have basically checked out already, either officially (Juan Martin Del Potro has called it quits for this season, but I can't blame him - more time to recover from surgery is a good thing) or unofficially. If you see some players just going through the motions to avoid fines or pick up appearance fees, you can probably guess what's going on.

There's only one top ten player in action: Mikhail Youzhny, currently world number 9, is the top seed in St. Petersburg, where the rest of the field is not anything to get excited about. The second seed is Sergiy Stakhovsky, ranked #35 in the world. If he's healthy, Youzhny has no reason not to go deep at this tournament, as he shouldn't face anyone but qualifiers, wildcards, or clay-court specialists before the semifinals. After that, things can get a bit more interesting - last week's champion Troicki is in the draw, as is Dolgopolov and wildcard Tursunov. This may be his best chance this year to have a good run and get some momentum before the end of the season.

The bottom half of the draw in St. Petersburg is a who's-who of second-tier Eastern European tennis players. There are a bunch of guys who just on the verge of reaching the top of the game, but haven't been able to do it yet: Gabashvili, Tipsarevic, Istomin, Stakhovsky, and Igor Andreev. Should be fun to see them in action, as well as Frenchmen Jeremy Chardy and Paul-Henri Mathieu. Any number of people could make it out of this half of the draw.

The biggest news of the week is actually the return of former world number one Thomas Muster, who's been given a wildcard into the Bank Austria Tennis Trophy tournament. The 43-year old winner of the 1995 French Open has been trying to make a comeback on the challenger circuit this year, but he's gone 1-6 in matches at that level. He drew fifth-seed Ernests Gulbis in the first round, and that's just an entirely different level of competition. It's an ill-advised comeback attempt, all around, and while I wish him well, I don't give him much of a shot. Head on over to the Champions tour if you're itching for match player, Mr. Muster.

The draw in Vienna is moderately strong, with four players from the top 20, and both of last week's losing finalists. Baghdatis and Florian Mayer could play in the second round, in fact. Another potentially good second-round match is James Blake and top Austrian player Jurgen Melzer. Marin Cilic is also in town, as well as Phillip Kohlschreiber and Nicolas Almagro. Some good players here in Vienna, and there could be late round fireworks, if people live up to their seedings.

The situation is much the same Montpellier, which has five top 20 players but nobody in the top 10. Nikolay Davydenko is the top seed, but with the form he's in, he's nowhere near the favorites to win the tournament, even with a favorable draw. The draw also features Tsonga, Monfils, Llodra, Gasquet, Gilles Simon, Nicolas Mahut (who won a challenger today against Bulgarian up-and-comer Grigor Dimitrov without breaking serve) and Arnaud Clement make up a strong French contingent. But don't count out David Nalbandian, Ivan Ljubicic, or John Isner. Jarkko Nieminen, who played some excellent tennis in Stockholm, is also lurking in the draw.

It's certainly not a likely outcome, but there's an outside chance of a semifinal rematch between Isner and Mahut, which would be great publicity if it did come to pass. Still, I don't think I see it happening.

Week 42 Finals

2010-10-24T02:58:00.002-04:00

In each tournament taking place this week, we had easy semifinal and one extremely close one. Federer and Troicki were the easy winners, over Ljubicic and Cuevas, as expected. Ljubicic just couldn't do anything to hurt Federer, and once he lost the first set (a tight one, admittedly) in a tiebreak, it was essentially over. Troicki must have appreciated finding a clay-court specialist ranked around 50 in the world in the semifinals, and he took advantage of the opportunity, winning 6-3, 6-3.

The other pair of matches were much tighter. In Stockholm, Jarkko Nieminen and Florian Mayer were playing for the privilege of losing to Roger Federer in the final, and I must admit that I expected Nieminen to come out ahead in that one. I've seen Mayer play some great tennis for patches, but I haven't seen him put together a week as strong as this. He's no slouch - he was the ATP newcomer of the year in 2004, between Rafael Nadal and Gael Monfils. Yeah, that award has about a 50% success ratio. And this is his third ATP final, but it is his first on hard courts, as the other two were on clay. And to be facing Roger Federer in the final? That's a big ask. The only thing he may have going for him is the fact that nobody - Federer included - gives him any chance of winning, so if he can come out in good form, he may be able to surprise the Swiss number one. But it does make sense that he's getting 10:1 odds to win the match.

In Moscow, Istomin had Baghdatis on the ropes. If I'm not mistaken, he was up a double break in the third and decisive set, only to stumble at the finish line and allow Baggy a chance to come back and take the match in a tiebreak. That's got to be disheartening for the top Uzbek player, but an impressive comeback from the Cypriot. That should make the final interesting - Troicki may be the underdog, but he's got to be fresher coming in, considering his easier semifinal match. That one could go either way - if you want to see a competitive match, rather than a pure display of skill, I suggest catching the final in Moscow, rather the Federer-Mayer final, which will be surprising if it turns out to be close.

Week 42 Semifinals

2010-10-23T03:02:00.003-04:00

With eight players left in the two tournaments we have going on this week, there are two interesting stories to look at. The first is whether anyone can stop Roger Federer in Stockholm. Honestly, the odds are not great at this point. Federer looked beatable in the first set against compatriot Wawrinka, who came out absolutely on fire but couldn't keep up that level of play, and faded in the second and third sets, while Federer has started at less than his best, only to raise his game and come through in the end. The only other player who had a shot at beating Fed was second seed Robin Soderling, who at least has a win over Federer this year - but he was beaten by Florian Mayer, who eked out a tight first set and then ran away with the second, as a frustrated Soderling started spraying errors.

Fed still has to play Ivan Ljubicic in the semis, but Ljubicic hasn't beaten Federer since 2003, and that's quite a while ago. The other semifinalist, Jarkko Nieminen, is 0-11 against the Fed. Mayer also doesn't have a win against the former world number one. So things are looking good for Roger to clinch the title in Stockholm.

In Moscow, the story is quite different - the seeds have been dropping like flies, and only one is left. Marcos Baghdatis is also the only player left of the four semifinalists who has already won an ATP title. The other three players have yet to take one, so it will be interesting to see whether Baggy can frustrate them, or if we'll have a first-time winner this week. I think the least likely contender is probably Pablo Cuevas. He's a fine player, but this isn't his best surface. When he wins a title, I expect it will be on clay.

As for the other two players, this could be their week. Denis Istomin and Viktor Troicki are both extremely capable players on this surface, and it's only a matter of time before they each win titles. Istomin made a final this year, and lost a tight match to Sergiy Stakhovsky, while Troicki has made two finals before, even though he hasn't made one this year. Both players have showed flashes of brilliance that suggest to me that they could be bound for the top 20, if they could just work on their consistency. Both players lost excellent matches to Nadal in the past month - and even playing Nadal tough when he's on his game is an accomplishment. I'd actually like to see Istomin-Troicki in the final, but we'll just have to wait and see how it shakes out.

Week 42 Quarterfinals

2010-10-22T03:03:00.003-04:00

The big news of the week so far is that Roger Federer played his 900th ATP-level match on Wednesday, as he brutalized poor American Taylor Dent in under an hour. He's showing no signs of slowing, and barring an injury Other than that, the other interesting story of the week has been the mass exodus of seeds from both Moscow and Stockholm. Of the sixteen seeded players, only six have made it to the quarterfinal round. And eight of those players had a first-round bye.

Three of the seeded players to crash out are still in the running for the ATP year-end finals - Mikhail Youzhny withdrew with illness, while Tomas Berdych was bested in a fairly straightforward match with the flying Finn Jarkko Nieminen, and JW Tsonga was just a bit too error-prone against Viktor Troicki. He lost the second set on a fairly lucky net cord against him on break point, but he had his chances in the third set, and when the big points came up, he just couldn't find the court.

Of the remaining seeds, two of them are facing off tomorrow. Roger Federer takes on Stan Wawrinka, which has the potential to be an interesting match. Fed leads the head to head 5-1, but Wawrinka suggested that he may be a new player during the U.S. Open. He should have had enough time to recover from playing his heart out in Flushing and then in the Davis Cup playoff, so this will be an interesting test to see if new coach Peter Lundgren has really had an effect on the number two Swiss.

Hometown boy Robin Soderling gets German Florian Mayer in the quarters, and he should have a fairly easy win - Mayer can be a good player, but he isn't anywhere near consistent enough from point to point and match to match to handle the kind of player that Soderling has become. And Ivan Ljubicic gets Croatian qualifier Ivan Dodig, which should be a win for the veteran. The other quarterfinal in Stockholm is actually perhaps the most interesting, as it features a pair of veteran players on the comeback trail - James Blake and aforementioned Finn. Blake has had a much worse year (his ranking is 90 points Nieminen's) but he also leads the head-to-head 6-0. Nieminen is an exceptional mover and counter-puncher, while Blake can hit through just about anybody when he's on his game. Blake also has a great record at this tournament, so this one could be fun to watch. A great contrast in styles from two very experienced and interesting players.

The picture is even bleaker for the seeds in Moscow - and for the hometown boys as well! After Youzhny pulled out of the tournament, Davydenko lost in the first round to Pablo Cuevas, which is a match that last year's Davydenko never would have come close to losing. The only Russian left in the draw is Igor Kunitsyn, who faces off against up-and-coming Uzbek Denis Istomin. Another player in the same kind of career position is Alexandr Dolgopolov, who plays Marcos Baghdatis in the quarterfinals.

Baggy is one of the two remaining seeds in Moscow, the other being Radek Stepanek, who faces Pablo Cuevas. Neither Stepanek nor Baghdatis has had the kind of season that they would have hoped for, after great starts to the season. And Baghdatis is defending points from winning this championship last year - both could use deep runs or even a win here. The last quarterfinal is between Viktor Troicki and Horacio Zeballos. The Argentine is best on clay, and based on what I've seen from him, he always will be, while Troicki is starting to show levels of his game that I haven't seen before. He's still having problems closing out matches - see both Nadal and Djokovic in the past month - but he's played well enough to beat both of them.

We'll see if the seed exodus continues this week - we could have some relative newcomers lifting trophies come Sunday!

Shanghai Wrap-Up and Week 42 Preview

2010-10-18T01:06:00.002-04:00

I have to admit, that was something of a surprising result. The final in Shanghai featured Andy Murray and Roger Federer, both of whom were in spectacular form coming in to the final. The pair had played some very close matches, so it was reasonable to expect another tight affair. Surprisingly, the match was something of a blowout. Even more surprising, the winner was Andy Murray - the other times their matches ended with lopsided results, it was a straightforward victory for Federer.

But this time, Murray was on the top of his game while Federer was a little bit off. He may have been a bit unlucky in the beginning of the second set, when a bad call may have cost him a point that he was forced to replay. But he wasn't unlucky on his second try, when he sailed a forehand wide under no particular pressure. Murray played some great tennis - no question about that, but Federer made too many errors on the big points.

Looking ahead to next week, there are a pair of tournaments to look at - one in Moscow and one in Stockholm. It's an odd week for tennis, because five of the world's top ten players are in action, but the 8th seed in both tournaments is ranked outside the top 35. So while there are some players to watch, the majority of the players in action are not at the top of the game just now.

That isn't to say that there aren't good matches in the early going - in Moscow, wildcard Dmitry Tursunov takes on Viktor Troicki, which should be an exciting match for the home crowd. And in Stockholm, James Blake (also in on a wildcard) faces the 7th seed Thomaz Bellucci. Those are big matches for both of these players, who are trying to make comebacks after injury layoffs. Neither one is going to be easy.

It will be interesting to see how these draws shake out - Federer really ought to win in Stockholm, and will have almost no excuse if he can't make it through the draw. The second seed is Robin Soderling, who got brutally thrashed by Federer just this last week, winning only a pair of games. On the other hand, the top seed in Moscow is on a terrible run of form. If he can put together a good week, it will really be a turnaround. He has a good chance, without too many tough opponents waiting in his way. The later stages of the tournament could get tricky, though.

Shanghai Masters Final

2010-10-16T10:49:00.002-04:00

The finals have been set for the Shanghai Masters, and it's an exciting match. I must admit that - for the most part - this tournament has been something of a bust, as a majority of the highly-anticipated match-ups either failed to happen or fizzled out when they did. Even the Djokovic-Federer semifinal, a rematch of that astounding match from the U.S. Open, failed to provide much excitement. Here's hoping that the final will be a good match - it certainly has the pedigree for it.

The record between Federer and Murray should be familiar to most tennis fans. Murray is one of the very few players who has a winning record against Roger, though it's getting tighter. Before the summer hardcourt swing, Federer had won the last three times they'd met. That was when Murray beat Federer in the Toronto Masters final. At the moment, their record stands with Murray ahead 7-5.

Coming into the final, neither player has lost a set this week. Murray hasn't even been closer than 6-4, while Federer has at least gone 7-5 in the first set against Djokovic. On the other hand, the Swiss master has faced a significantly higher caliber of opponent than Murray had to get through to make it here. He had to beat John Isner, Robin Soderling, and Novak Djokovic, while Murray's toughest test was JW Tsonga, who looked to be troubled by a lingering injury. What isn't clear, though, is how their different paths will affect the result.

It's possible that Murray, who has been able to cruise straight through to the final, will be fresh and ready to face Federer. Roger's game shouldn't be a surprise to him anymore, after twelve previous encounters. On the other hand, the fact that he hasn't faced anyone who could give him a challenge up to this point might work against him, as the sudden rise in the quality of tennis he'll be up against could be difficult to adjust to.

Based purely on form, it's tough to bet against Federer, but Andy Murray is one of the best players on tour when it comes to frustrating an opponent, and he's beaten Federer in a grand slam final already this year. I'm looking forward to see how this turns out - it's not the most significant match of the year, but it's a big one for Federer, who says he can still dominate the tour the way he has in the past, and if he can tear through the field here in Shanghai, I'm pretty much inclined to believe him.

Shanghai Masters Quarterfinals

2010-10-15T00:40:00.002-04:00

Surprisingly, this week in Shanghai has not really turned out to be about the World Tour Finals contenders - the majority of them have come out playing pretty atrocious tennis, at a time when they need to bring their A games. Almagro, Cilic, Youzhny, and Verdasco failed to win a match this week. Berdych won only one before he was upset by Guillermo Garcia-Lopez (who is on a real tear, by the way) who Andy Roddick was dominating before the American aggravated an injury to his thigh muscle. For the record, this is Roddick's third trip to Shanghai, and he's been injured in all three trips. The prior two ended his season, but he's hoping that he'll be able to come back and still qualify for the year-end championships in London. For what it's worth, Roddick was playing really good tennis in this Asian swing before he got injured.

The two players who are showing up for the Shanghai Masters are Jurgen Melzer, who got the biggest win of his career in an upset of Nadal yesterday, and JW Tsonga, who is playing just his second tournament back since Wimbledon, but is through to the quarters all the same. Both guys need deep runs here to bolster their odds of making it to London, and while Tsonga has his work cut out for him - he faces Andy Murray tonight - Melzer should see his way through the semis, as he'll be happy to find himself facing Juan Monaco instead of Davydenko or Verdasco. All credit to Melzer for his victory, but the fact is if you want to beat Nadal, it's best to get him on a hard court, late in the season.

I like Murray against Tsonga, as the Scot has owned the Frenchman recently, and Tsonga is still shaking the rust off. JW's lone win against Murray was in the first round of the Aussie open when he made his shocking run to the final, and he hasn't really had that kind of form recently. It should be a fun match though, and since it's the first one on, I'll probably stay up to watch it.

The other exciting match-up is another round in the Federer-Soderling battle. But come on, Federer is still 13-1 against the Swede, and that one loss almost went the other way. I like Federer to get through to the semis here, as well. If it's raining and they have to close the roof, that could help Soderling, as the wind can mess with his toss and big groundstrokes. But even with that much help, it shouldn't make a difference.

The other two quarterfinals feature some surprising contenders - Jurgen Melzer and Juan Monaco, which could go either way but ought to go Melzer's way, as the in-form player. In the other quarter, Novak Djokovic faces Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, who is playing the best tennis of his career, but his run will end against Novak tonight.

Week 40 Wrap-up and Shangai Masters Preview

2010-10-10T15:01:00.002-04:00

Even though we're through with play on Sunday, the action from week 40 is not quite finished. The final in Tokyo has concluded as one might have expected, with Nadal just too strong for Monfils, but in Beijing, rain has kept Djokovic and Ferrer from playing out their match. Djokovic is already up a break by the fourth game, though, so when play resumes on Monday, it seems like he'll have the advantage.

It wasn't the most exciting week for this pair of Asian ATP 500 events, but there were some absolutely amazing matches. Roddick-Monfils and Nadal-Troicki were two of the best, most exciting matches that I've seen for the last few months. This was a good week for Troicki, who has a fair amount of talent but hasn't really broken through with any big wins. He almost had a career-changing victory over Nadal, but he couldn't quite pull it off. He had already beaten Melzer in a third-set tiebreak in the previous round, so here's hoping he can continue playing that way and build off a very strong week, even if he did completely choke when he had the match on his racket.

The week in Beijing wasn't quite as exciting, but it was surprising to see the second, third, and fourth seeds put up weak efforts in their quarterfinal losses. Murray, Soderling, and Davydenko all failed to win a set in that round. Good show from Djokovic and Ferrer, but all of those other guys are still trying to qualify for the end-of-year championships, and the opportunities to wrap up those points are getting scarcer.

Next week in Shanghai, trying to rack up points in order to qualify for London will be the focus, for a lot of these players. It's really late in the season for only three of the eight spots to be wrapped up - Nadal, Djokovic, and Federer are all in, which isn't a shock. Murray and Soderling are in very good shape, with Berdych in a moderately safe position, while Roddick and Verdasco are currently in the 7th and 8th spots, but are in no way secure in their spots. One or both of them will probably even drop this week, as Ferrer was sitting in 9th, but getting to the final in Beijing (at least, maybe even winning) will help his chances immensely.

One of the players with a chance of qualifying for the year-end championships is already out of Shanghai, as Nicolas Almagro fell in a Sunday first-round match to Alexandr Dolgopolov - it was another third set tiebreak, which is a fine way to start off the week. I'll take a look at what other action you can expect as I usually do, going quarter by quarter.

Nadal, as the top seed and recent champion in Tokyo, isn't going to have it easy this week. He gets a bye in the first round, but then he'll have to face either Gilles Simon or Stan Wawrinka, who is playing his first ATP tournament since the U.S. Open, where he played some incredible tennis but wore himself out in the process. We'll see if he can continue his great under new coach Peter Lundgren. And after that, he'll have either Jurgen Melzer, Mardy Fish, or Denis Istomin. The other half of Nadal's quarter is not quite so loaded - Davydenko could potentiall be challenged by Sergiy Stakhovsky, but I'll be shocked if Verdasco doesn't get through de Bakker and Monaco, which will help his London push. Verdasco-Davydenko should be a good match, if both get that far, and then the winner will get Nadal (or his conqueror) in the quarters.

The second quarter belongs to Andy Murray, who has not been on a great run since he won one of the Summer hardcourt Masters titles. He'll probably open against Radek Stepanek in the second round, and then he gets either Chardy, Baghdatis, or Dolgopolov. He doesn't need to win the tournament to secure his place in London - he just needs to win a couple rounds here, and I'll be shocked if he doesn't. The bottom half of his quarter has Mikhail Youzhny, as well as Sam Querrey and Michael Berrer (which isn't a bad first-round match) but the real wildcard is JW Tsonga, back from an injury layoff, who opens against Feliciano Lopez. Murray's going to have to really slump to not come through this section, though.

The third quarter is third-seed Roger Federer's (I know, can you believe it?) and his half is pretty easy, with one potential exception. It's likely that Fed's first round match will be against John Isner, and without any match play to get used to the conditions, that could be a tough one. Isner would have to play (and serve) at his absolute max to make it a match, but it's an outside possibility. Beyond that, I don't see Seppi, Yen-Hsun Lu, or a slumping Marin Cilic giving him any trouble. The other half of his section is a a bit tougher, though. Robin Soderling is there, and he'll open against either Tipsarevic or Golubev. Ferrer beat Soderling last week, and he's in this section, but with almost no rest between tournaments, it's going to be a tough ask to play Djokovic in a final today and (in all likelihood) Llodra in a first round tomorrow, in an entirely different city.

The last quarter is Djokovic's, but he's going to be in a similar situation to Ferrer, if not quite as bad, since he has a first-round bye. He'll probably open against Ljubicic, and that could be a tricky match, but it probably won't be if you were looking at the Croat's recent form. Djoker's section has one of the best first-rounders, between Richard Gasquet and Ernests Gulbis - call it "the battle of wasted talent." The winner of that one will most likely get Monfils, and then that winner gets Djokovic. That's pretty exciting, but I think the other half of this section is even better. Roddick and Berdych are the seeds, and both are vying for places in the year-end championships. Roddick opens against Kohlschreiber, then gets a relatively easy match against either Schwank or Garcia-Lopez, and neither of them are at their best on hard-courts, but then Roddick and Berdych will face off, assuming Berdych can beat Robredo (he probably can). That will be an essential match for both of these players' end-of-year fortunes.

There was a lull after the U.S. Open, but things are starting to heat up again, and this is the most exciting end-of-year championship qualifying season that I can recall. Usually, there are only two or at most three spots left to determine at this point in the season, not five. Plenty of players with a lot to gain (and lose) in this week's action.

Week 40 Quarterfinals

2010-10-07T18:08:00.003-04:00

We're through the first two rounds in this week of dueling Asian ATP 500 tournaments, and things are just starting to heat up. Of the eight matches taking place today, six of them are ones that you wouldn't be surprised to see in a Grand Slam quarterfinal, rather than a relatively low-tier tournament such as these.

In Tokyo, the field was slightly weaker from the beginning, and that's reflected in the line-up we have in store for today. Rafael Nadal, who handled the young Canadian player Milos Raonic fairly easily yesterday - will face a much different opponent today. Dmitry Tursunov is a former top-20 player who nearly vanished from the game. He's been 1-5 on the year before this week, when he notched two very nice wins over Richard Gasquet and his own doubles partner Ernests Gulbis. He's a great personality, so I'm excited to see him playing well again, but his run ends here against Nadal. Still, his ranking should jump quite a bit next week, considering he's at 432 just now.

The second quarterfinal features Viktor Troicki, who won a tough match against Jurgen Melzer in the last round, against Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, last week's titlist in Bangkok. He's playing spectacular tennis and could get a worn out Troicki, so I think we're heading for a rematch between Nadal and his countryman in the semifinals. That would be exciting to see.

Two more veterans will face each other in the third quarterfinal - and they're also both in the process of coming back from injury layoffs. Jarkko Nieminen, a steady, completely un-flashy baseliner from Finland will face off against mercurial, net-rushing, recently-married Radek Stepanek. It will be an interesting contrast in styles, and Nieminen has been playing quite well, coming off a final last week. This one could go either way.

The last and best quarterfinal in Tokyo is between Andy Roddick and Gael Monfils. This is an interesting match because both players tend to play more defensive than they really should - and Monfils definitely based his service motion off Andy Roddick's (just watch it - the only difference is Gael doesn't step up to the line with his back foot). Monfils leads in their head-to-head, so this could go either way. I'm looking forward to it.

In Beijing, on the other hand, all four of these matches are just spectacular. Every one could easily have been a final any other week of the year. Top seed Novak Djokovic plays Gilles Simon, who gutted out a tough win against Michael Berrer in the last round. Djoker, on the other hand, got a walkover from Mardy Fish. It's likely that he'll be the fresher player and come out on top - but it could also be that he could have used more time on court, since beating a Chinese wildcard in the first round doesn't really constitute much useful experience.

In the next match, Nikolay Davydenko faces big John Isner. This is definitely a contrast in styles. Normally, I'd say that Davydenko's return would be too much for Isner's serving prowess, but Davydenko has not been in his best form since he came back from injury, and has just been hemorrhaging ranking points this Fall. This could be a win for Isner, but it won't be easy. Both guys played opponents with similar styles in the last round - Isner beat Kohlschreiber while Davydenko bested Cilic. They should each be primed for a good match.

The bottom half has David Ferrer playing Robin Soderling, which is a really great match on paper - but unfortunately for Ferrer, he's gotten owned by Soderling in the past. Robin leads the head-to-head 7-2, and both those wins were on clay. It could be a good match - they play each other tough, most of the time - but the conditions favor Soderling, so I like his odds.

The final match is between Ivan Ljubicic and Andy Murray. Ivan won a Masters event earlier in the year and has not made much noise since. On the other hand, Murray hasn't been playing up to his standards recently - he won a summer hardcourt Masters title, but like his opponent today, has otherwise been less successful than he would prefer. Their last match was a really good one, so I'm hoping this one will be fun as well.

Week 39 Review and Week 40 Preview

2010-10-04T01:41:00.005-04:00

The last week of tennis actually turned out to be pretty exciting - I'm sorry I wasn't around to cover it more while it was actually going on. I'll do a quick recap, though.

In Thailand, it looked like things were going to be pretty boring. All of the top contenders dropped, one by one. Verdasco looked sluggish in his loss to Benjamin Becker, as did Gulbis to Guillermo Garcia-Lopez. Del Potro and Melzer were beaten by players who had great days, Olivier Rochus and Jarkko Nieminen, in particular. Nieminen had also beaten Viktor Troicki, which is a pretty good pair of scalps for the top Finn. With all of these guys gone, it looked like Rafael Nadal would cruise to the title. He was the only seed to make the semifinals, after all.

But then something unusual happened. In his match against fellow Spaniard Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, Nadal managed to do something I've never seen anyone do, much less him. He lost 24 of 26 break point chances in the match. Garcia-Lopez won the second set in the tiebreak and managed one break in the third set to take the match. It was a pretty stunning performance from Garcia-Lopez, who followed it up with a win over Jarkko Nieminen in the final. He had a great week as well, but Guillermo was riding high after that incredibly gutsy performance against Nadal. This was a great week for these two vets, who between the two of them beat five of the eight seeds in the draw. Both of them jump into the top 50 in the rankings this week, as well.

In Malaysia, there were quite a few stories to pay attention to over the course of the week. Davydenko's slide continues while another Russian is finally back on the rise when Nikolay lost in his first match to Igor Andreev. Andreev also beat one of the other interesting stories of the tournament, as young Canadian player beat Sergiy Stakhovsky in the second round before he went out. Keep an eye out for Raonic. Andreev eventually lost to a third Russian, Mikhail Youzhny - and I predict that he's going to be the top Russian player in the game, in not too long. The best match on that side of the draw was Youzhny over Baghdatis, which went for two close sets before the Russian closed out the Cypriot with relative ease in the third.

On the other side of the draw, the best match-up was between David Ferrer and Tomas Berdych, which also went three sets, and the eventual winner (Ferrer) had to come back from a set down to do it. But while Youzhny was able to build on his win, the Spaniard seemed to be tired from his tough victory over this year's Wimbledon finalist, and he fell to Andrey Golubev. Now Golubev had just notched an impressive win over top seed Robin Soderling. The Kazakh player actually won nine sets in a row before Youzhny came back in the final and beat him in a third-set tiebreak. Despite not quite being able to close the deal, this was a great week for Golubev. I love his game, and I think we'll see him in the top ten at some point soon. And credit to Youzhny as well. Great performances from both guys.

Meanwhile, we're getting closer to the mandatory Masters event in Shanghai, so the tournament draws are getting more and more stacked in preparation. The two 500 events taking place this week in Beijing and Tokyo have 18 of the world's top 20 players in action. The only two missing are both Swiss: Federer and Wawrinka. In Japan, Nadal is the top seed, but the rest of the draw is not as strong. In China, we have seven of the world's top ten players, which is just unbelievable. I'll look at the Tokyo draw, first.

In addition to Nadal's presence, the other noteworthy thing about this tournament is that it marks JW Tsonga's return to action and will be his first tournament played since Wimbledon. He has a tough opening round against last week's finalist in Thailand, Jarkko Nieminen, but that's far from the best opening match-up you'll see thsi week. Eighth-seeded Michael Llodra gets Marco Chiudinelli (ironically, the top Swiss player in action this week), Viktor Troicki plays home-town hope Kei Nishikori, Ernests Gulbis gets former top-tenner Dmitry Tursunov, Richard Gasquet plays Thiemo de Bakker, and Juan Martin Del Potro gets Feliciano Lopez! That match is actually in progress now, and I am upset that I can't find any streaming coverage of it.

Looking ahead a bit, Nadal could get Milos Raonic in the second round, which could be interesting. If Nishikori wins his first round, he could play Jurgen Melzer next, which is a stern challenge for the Japanese 20-year old. It would be great to see Michael Llodra play Radek Stepanek in the second round, as these guys are two fun, veteran players who love to serve and volley. That would be like old-school tennis! Also keep an eye out for a potential match-up between Roddick and Monfils. There are a lot of players who can make noise in this draw, so it's tough to know just how it will shake out. Roddick needs a good run, to try to get his year back on track and finish strong. He said he's 100% healthy again, which is what he'll need to be against this level of competition.

But that group of first-round match-ups is nothing compared to the smorgasbord you'll find in Beijing. Here's the first-round matches I find particularly exciting: Fish-Tipsarev, Querrey-Simon, Cilic-Bellucci, Kohlschreiber-Verdasco, Istomin-Ferrer, Soderling-Robredo, Ljubicic-Youzhny, and Dolgopolov-Baghdatis. I mean, are you kidding? That's an all-star line-up of top players for a 32-player draw. And by the second round, the possibilities are just too numerous to mention. Suffice it to say I'll be watching this tournament with a great deal of excitement.

We'll see what the week brings! It's getting pretty late in the year, and only three of the top eight players have sealed their passage into the year-end tournament. The race is getting tight, now.

Week 38 Review and Week 39 Preview

2010-09-26T23:30:00.005-04:00

I'm somewhat reluctant to admit it, but I have to say that it was tough to get excited about pretty much anything that happened over the course of the past week - the biggest story of the past week was Rafael Nadal's commitment to play in Queens next year. There was almost an enticing final in Metz, as Gilles Simon and Richard Gasquet looked prime to meet, but then Gasquet withdrew from his semifinal match with a fever. The Frenchman won, but it was a pretty depleted field. And Chela beat Andujar in Bucharest - a tournament that was filled with steady but unexciting clay court players.

But fortunately, things are starting to heat up. Last week, the 14th-ranked player in the world was the top player in action - but now, six of the top ten are playing. This is the start of the Asian swing, with tournaments in Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. Nadal is playing, along with Soderling, Davydenko, Berdych, Youzhny, and Verdasco. But the biggest story of the week is that this marks former U.S. Open champion Juan Martin Del Potro's return to action after spending most of the year recovering from surgery. He starts off with a tricky encounter against Olivier Rochus, so there's not much time to get back in the groove. It will be very interesting to see how the Argentine does in his return. Assuming DelPo gets past Rochus, it's likely that he'll meet Nadal in the quarters, which should be interesting. Del Potro just blew Nadal off the court the last few times they've played.

Unfortunately for the tournament, except for the top couple of players and Juan Martin Del Potro, the rest of the draw is a bit weak. The second quarter of the draw is headed up by Ernests Gulbis, but it also has Rainer Schuettler and Teymuraz Gabasvhili. The third quarter has a handful of guys who could make the semis - Jurgen Melzer, Dudi Sela, Marco Chiudinelli, Viktor Troicki, and Jarkko Nieminen. The last quarter belongs to Fernando Verdasco - who doesn't have anyone comparable to a DelPo to challenge him. Thiemo de Bakker and Feliciano Lopez are fine players, but I'd be shocked not to see Verdasco come through his quarter. It's likely that we'll get the top seeds through to that stage - and Nadal-Gulbis plus Melzer-Verdasco would be a pretty great line-up for such a small torunament.

In Kuala Lumpur, there are more top players - four of the six top ten guys in action are in Malaysia. Robin Soderling is the top seed, and he could have a tricky path through the draw - his section has Andrey Golubev, tall, big-serving South African Kevin Anderson, and Yen-Hsun Lu. Soderling hasn't played his best in small tournaments like these this year, so he could use a good run.

While Bangkok has the bigger stars, the depth of field is better in Kuala Lumpur. The second quarter has Berdych and Ferrer, as well as a pair of young wildcards - Yuki Bhambri and Bernard Tomic. Tough to bet against Berdych in that group, though he hasn't played particularly well since Wimbledon. Istomin is also in this group - he's got an outside chance of making the quarters.

The third quarter has one of the best opening-round matches in this tournament, in which Marcos Baghdatis faces off against Kei Nishikori. Dolgopolov is also in this group, and could get Mikhail Youzhny in the second round. Any of these four guys could get through. The last quarter has Sergiy Stakhovsky against Michael Russel as another pretty good first-round match, and a potential match between Russians Davydenko and Andreev in the second round. The young Canadian player Milos Raonic is also in this section. There are some very interesting top players and young guns in this tournament - there could be some fun matches.

It's still early, but there's a chance for some fireworks this week, with so many of the top players and talented young guns in action. I'm looking forward to the tennis.

Davis Cup Wrap-Up and Week 38 Preview

2010-09-20T02:13:00.006-04:00

It is technically a bit early to be writing a Davis Cup weekend wrap-up, because Australia and Belgium are still locked in their fifth rubber, tied at two a piece. Play was largely suspended yesterday, as heavy rains made action impossible. With Lleyton Hewitt out of the picture, the first reverse singles match was a tough one, but Olivier Rochus beat Peter Luczak in four sets, three of them tiebreaks. Now Steve Darcis and Carsten Ball are playing - this could be a big moment for young Carsten.

As for the ties that did finish up today, there were a surprising number of comebacks. India completed their comeback from two points to none down after the first day's singles - helped immensely by a retirement by top Brazilian player Tomaz Bellucci against Somdev Devvarman. A massive comeback for the Indian squad, though I must say I don't like their chances in the World Group next year.

Austria also came back from two points to one down to beat Israel in Tel Aviv, which is a devastating result for the Israelis. It wasn't a surprise that Melzer beat Sela (though the ease with which he dispatched the top Israeli player was a bit of a surprise) but Harel Levy must have felt like he had a chance to beat Martin Fischer, but the Austrian was not overwhelmed by the occasion or the crowd, and he pulled out a fairly straightforward four set win. That was Fischer's first Davis Cup match! Stunning performance.

But the biggest fightback was Serbia's defeat of the Czech Republic, after losing the doubles rubber on Saturday. Novak Djokovic beat Tomas Berdych in a rematch of their Wimbledon semifinal, and then Janko Tipsarevic absolutely blitzed Radek Stepanek. The veteran may have been a bit exhausted, or feeling some lingering effects from his recent injuries, but Tipsy blew him off the court. So now Serbia is on to their first Davis Cup final, set to face France in Belgrade in a few months' time. Tipsarevic was really the hero, winning both of his singles matches.

But perhaps the biggest hero of the weekend for any particular team was Mardy Fish, who won two five-set singles matches and a four-set doubles match to put the U.S. past the Colombians, in what could charitably be called just about the worst possible conditions for American players. It wasn't great tennis, but Fish played incredibly tough and showed a lot of heart. There were times in the past few years that Mardy was talking like his career was in its twilight stages, but I don't think there's any reason to expect he doesn't have a lot left in him during the years to come.

In other news, Grigor Dimitrov won his second consecutive Challenger tournament, and jumped into the top 150 in the rankings. Brad Gilbert predicted he'd be in the top 20 within a year, which still sounds like a big ask, but it's not outside the realm of possibility. If he can get closer to the top hundred by the end of the year and start getting direct acceptance into top-level tournaments, he'll have the chance to really prove himself among the game's best.

Anyway, looking ahead to the action during the coming week. I'll admit that it's not the most exciting, after a weekend of non-stop Davis Cup action and two weeks of the U.S. Open. But there are some interesting storylines to look at.

In Bucharest, we have the year's final clay court tournament! The clay court year may be ending with a whimper, rather than a bang, because the top seed in Romania is 22nd ranked Albert Montanes, while the second seed is 45th ranked Florian Mayer. Keep an eye on Victor Hanescu in this draw, as the top Romanian player loves clay and is hot coming off Romania's win in the Davis Cup. Every one of these players knows that they should be getting ready for the hard court season in Asia, but their best bet for ranking points is on the clay, so they're scrambling for what they can get in this, their lost shot this year. It's an interesting assortment of specialists.

The draw in Metz is quite a bit stronger, headlined by a slumping Marin Cilic, but also featuring Monfils, Gasquet, Llodra, and Simon, a powerful French contingent, no question. Simon opens against flamboyant Jamaican Dustin Brown, which should be an interesting match. Other match-ups to watch for are Arnaud Clement as a potential second-round for Marin Cilic, and Xavier Malisse potentially getting Ivan Ljubicic. And Jarkko Nieminen and Benjamin Becker in the first round isn't a bad match-up, and could be a fun match. I'll take another look at these draws a few rounds in, to see how things have developed.

Davis Cup Saturday

2010-09-19T00:08:00.002-04:00

Of the ten Davis Cup ties relating to the World Group that are taking place this weekend, four have already reached their conclusion. Three of the playoff rubbers: Germany has beaten South Africa, Romania has beaten Ecuador, and - in the only real surprise, Kazakhstan has trounced Switzerland. I expect that Stan Wawrinka, the player who really needed to put in a strong performance for Switzerland with Roger Federer out of the picture, was still exhausted and possibly nursing an injury from his run at the U.S. Open. It's not the first time this has happened, though, as Switzerland actually dropped out of the World Group as recently as 1998. Federer didn't help the Swiss come back from that a few years ago - I wonder if he'll do it next year.

In the World Group semifinals, France stormed to a 3-0 victory against Argentina. On the day of the first singles, it looked like Nalbandian was going to outplay Gael Monfils, but then Nalby just went away in the third set, and from that point on, Argentina was never even in the tie. France made it to their first final since 2002.

They'll face either Serbia or the Czech Republic - their rubber was tied at the end of the singles. Djokovic was forced to withdraw, and Troicki lost to Stepanek. But then Tipsarevic turned in one of his best career performances to beat Berdych in four sets. A really strong performance from Janko. Unfortunately for the Serbian fans, despite Djokovic's presence in the doubles, the Czechs won in straights, so they'll have the advantage going into the final day. It will be interesting to see if Djokovic plays singles, and how well he can play. If he does play up to his potential and manages to win, the match between Stepanek and Tipsarevic could be the deciding one, and that's an intriguing one.

As for the as-yet undecided playoff matches, the one that I have the most interest in is - as you might expect - the U.S. against Colombia. In an effort to counter the U.S. players' strengths at every turn, they not only decided to play the rubber on clay, but also decided to use pressureless balls. While it may have been tough for the U.S. players to deal with, it hasn't been easy for the Colombians either. In Mardy Fish's five-set win over Alejandro Falla, the two of them hit nearly 200 unforced errors. But Fish adjusted to the conditions, while Sam Querrey, who followed him, just couldn't get his game together in the adverse conditions. It wasn't an encouraging performance, but I can understand. While pressureless balls and clay courts make for some difficult back-court rallies, they don't make much difference up at net - which was why I favored Fish and Isner in the doubles match, and it turn out to be the case that they pulled out the win. If there's one thing that Isner's used to, after all, it's altitude. I don't know if Querrey's going back out for the reverse singles (I wouldn't be surprised if they subbed in Isner instead) but I think the odds of the Americans picking up one of those two points is pretty good.

Australia may be up two points to one over Belgium, so it may seem like their victory is assured. But Lleyton Hewitt is out of the reverse singles with a wrist injury, so it seems that either Peter Luczak or Carsten Ball will need to win a singles match to get the Australians, too. It's a break for the Belgians, but it's still a tough ask, to win both points on the final day of a Davis Cup match.

For example, I have to doubt that the Italians have a chance of winning both points against Sweden, particularly since that would mean that Potito Starace would have to beat Robin Soderling. That's not looking too likely to me.

India and Brazil had the most exciting first day of the whole weekend, despite it being an outright disaster for the home team. India lost both matches in five-set thrillers, but they bounced back in the doubles - not really a surprise, as Bhupathi and Paes are one of the great doubles teams of our era. Since the first singles matches were so close, there's a chance - not a big chance, but a slight one - for an Indian comeback tomorrow. But I see the Brazilians coming through.

And Israel and Austria are resuming action after taking a day off for Yom Kippur. It's tough to see Austria coming back from 2 points to 1 down, but if Melzer can beat Sela (a likely event) it would all come down to young Andreas Haider-Maurer against the veteran Harel Levy. That would be a deciding rubber that would be fun to see.

Davis Cup weekends are full of fun action. There were some good matches in the regional competition as well - Canadian teen Milos Raonic beat a vet from the Dominican Republic 9-7 in the fifth, which is a great result for him. Korea won the first two points of their tie against the Philippines, and both of their singles players were teenagers. Encouraging signs for the Korean team. And the young Lithuanian player Ricardas Berankis beat Blaz Kavcic of Slovakia, then contributed to a five-set doubles win as well. He could win the whole tie himself!

Davis Cup Preview

2010-09-16T10:39:00.003-04:00

I thought I was going to have all day to make a post about the Davis Cup, but somehow, Austria and Israel are already underway - the wonders of time zones and intercontinental play. So I'll take a look at what we can expect this weekend.

Of course, we're at the Davis Cup World Group semifinals, with four teams remaining. Argentina plays France and Serbia plays the Czech Republic. Despite not featuring the biggest Davis Cup nations - well, mostly Spain - from recent years, this is a pretty great line-up.

Unfortunately for Serbia, their best and linchpin player may not be at his freshest, having just played in a tough but losing grand slam final, which was even delayed a couple days. You've got to give the Serbs their doubles point, with Nenad Zimonjic on their team, against relatively weak Czech opposition on that front. But the tie will come down to precisely two factors - the first is how tired Novak Djokovic is after the past two weeks, and whether Radek Stepanek is finally back near his top form. He was on a prolonged injury layoff this year, and hasn't played particularly well since. But if he can get one point, and Tomas Berdych (who should be quite well-rested, losing in the first round at the U.S. Open) can win both his singles matches, I see a victory in the cards for the Czechs. But if Djokovic can build on his recent success, then there's no reason that this tie shouldn't go the Serbs' way. The home field advantage may help Tipsarevic and Troicki, who could be the players that determine the victory.

The other tie is arguably more difficult to call. The Argentine squad may be without Juan Martin Del Potro, but David Nalbandian has been the player of the year for the Davis Cup, thus far. He's absolutely dominated in the first two rounds, winning three singles matches and a doubles match. He hasn't even dropped a set yet, going 12-0 in those four matches. But he doesn't have the strongest back-up, as three of the four players for the Argentines are clay-court specialists. If Nalbandian can win both of his matches, I think that the Argentines may be able to get one more point - but that's no easy task. I think that this tie may come down in no small part to how well Frenchman Michael Llodra can play, since he was forced to retire in the third round of the U.S. Open against Tommy Robredo. But he had beaten Tomas Berdych earlier in the tournament. This one will be exciting, especially the matches featuring David Nalbandian - can he win a Davis Cup this year all on his own? The Argentines are also going for their third straight win on the road, which is tough to imagine.

While those two rubbers are undoubtedly important, there's a lot more Davis Cup action taking place this week, what with the World Group play-offs. These teams are playing each other for a chance at playing in the main tournament next year, and there are some big match-ups to look for.

As I noted, Austria and Israel are already in action. This tie should will down to one player - Austrian Jurgen Melzer. He's the best player in the arena, but he's also the only Austrian player of note. If this were in Austria, I'd give it to them easy. But it's more difficult in Tel Aviv. Dudi Sela already won the first point for the Israelis, and despite being down a set, Harel Levy is playing quite well. You may remember last year when they defeated Sweden and Russia, so the Israeli players seem to thrive in the Davis Cup format. While Austria is the slight favorite just based on the quality of their players, this could be an upset due to more intangible factors.

The U.S. is probably the biggest team in the playoff. The Americans haven't been in the World Group playoff since 2005. This time, they're playing at altitude in Colombia. Now they may be playing on red clay, which will favor the Colombians from the back of the court, but the thin air will allow the big serves of Isner, Querrey, and Fish to fly through the air. Despite less-than-stellar records on the surface, all three of the American singles players (soon-to-step down coach Pat McEnroe wanted to ensure we got those singles points, rather than getting a sure-fire doubles point with the Bryan Brothers) can play tennis on any surface. The Colombians have some solid players - Alejandro Falla nearly ousted Federer at Wimbledon, recall? But the rankings of their top two players are in the 60s, and that should be enough difference in the quality of play. It's not a sure thing, but the Americans haven't dropped out of the World Group since 1988, and I don't see it happening here, despite the lack of Roddick or the Bryans for the U.S. team.

The other notable absence at the Davis Cup playoffs is Roger Federer, who won't be playing for Switzerland against Kazakhstan. While you may think that it should be an easy win for the Swiss, the Kazakh contingent is deceptively talented. Andrey Golubev is in the top 50, and Kukushkin and Korolev are both in the top 100. Switzerland also has three players in the top 100, but one of them won't be showing up for the tie. This is the first World Group playoff for Kazakhstan, and once again - the big issue will be how Stan Wawrinka's feeling, after his long run at the U.S. Open. There's some upset potential here as well, though.

While the Swiss top player may be sitting out, the top Australian player is back. Lleyton Hewitt is here to help his country face the Belgian team, for a chance to get back into the World Group. If you can believe it, the Australians haven't been in the World Group since 2007. The last chance they had they were forced to play Chile without Hewitt in action, and were soundly defeated. I like their chances much better this time, as they'll only have to face the Belgian squad, which has Olivier Rochus as its top player. I'm surprised the Belgians picked outdoor hardcourt as the surface, since Hewitt loves that surface and young Aussie player Carsten Ball's serve should work wonders on it. I pick the Aussies here.

The Germany-South Africa contest might have been tight, but unfortunately, the South Africans are lacking their top player. Young giant Kevin Anderson won't be in action, and while the Germans don't have Tommy Haas either, Philipp Kohlschreiber should be able to shoulder the load against Rik de Voest and Izak Van Der Merwe.

The match-up between Sweden and Italy could be interesting. Italy has a pair (or perhaps a trio) of midlevel players, while Sweden has one top five player. In the Davis Cup format, you might prefer to have a few good players rather than just one great one (just ask Australian or Great Britain) but I'm not so sure.

I'll admit to being unable to muster too much excitement about the other two ties being contested this weekend. But I lean towards Brazil over Indian (Tomaz Bellucci is headed for the top 20) and I have no idea who's going to win between Romania and Ecuador, but no matter who wins, everybody else in the World Group is hoping to get them in the first round.

US Open Wrap-Up

2010-09-16T01:58:00.000-04:00

This is a bit belated, but now that the U.S. Open is over, we can look back on things with some more perspective. Obviously, the tournament was an unqualified success for Rafael Nadal, who completed his career grand slam, won his third consecutive major tournament, and put himself in the conversation among the greatest players of all time. Really, a stunning fortnight for him - and while he may not have had to face his toughest opponents on the way, but neither did Federer when he won his French Open. You can't blame Nadal for not being able to beat Federer this year - he beat everyone who he was supposed to, and that's all he needed to do.

Novak Djokovic had an amazing week as well, after nearly buckling in the first round to compatriot Viktor Troicki, he was fading in the heat and looked down for the count. But the sun started setting, he got a second wind, and rode it all the way through to the final. He thoroughly outplayed Federer in the semifinal match, but he still just barely won it. It's the best he's played since he lost to Nadal during the clay-court season in 2009, in the greatest three-set match ever played. But even with the aid of the weather, it wasn't enough to challenge Nadal in the final. But then again, we can only ask so much of one player.

Which may be part of the explanation for Federer's fall in the semis. Even though he almost won the match, he was the second-best player for the whole encounter. He was hitting way too many errors and not serving well enough to have expected any other result. But really, how could anyone have expected him to make another U.S. Open final? I guess we might have, since that's one record he didn't own - Lendl still (and probably always will) have the record for consecutive U.S. Open finals. Federer was probably spoiled by having relatively easy competition straight through to his semifinal - his only potentially tricky opponent, Soderling, he was able to take on in absolutely ideal conditions. That's not to say that he didn't play brilliantly in that match, but he may have gotten to Djokovic and started thinking about the final before he had dispatched the Serb. And though I wouldn't have expected it, the Djoker rose to the occasion and played spoiler. Still, a fine summer for Federer, despite not making the final here.

Everybody else, on the other hand, has some work to do in the last part of the season to make up for their disappointing Summers' ends. Well, Youzhny probably can take a break - and maybe Wawrinka, who played amazing tennis but wore himself out. But Andy Murray was passive and petulant in his loss to the other Swiss player, and he's gone another year without his maiden grand slam title. His game is brilliant, his talent is unquestionable - but his tactics are sometimes less than ideal, and his attitude is often the thing that brings him down.

Andy Roddick's showing was even worse - I'm honestly getting tired of hearing him say that his plan, going into the match, was to let his opponent miss. "There's no way he can keep this up," is his mantra after so many grand slam losses. I'm thinking back to Kohlschreiber at the Australian Open, Gasquet at Wimbledon, Lu at Wimbledon this year, or the other time that Tipsarevic beat Roddick, also at Wimbledon. But it's terrible to come out after the match and say that he successfully executed his strategy in that match, because if that's his strategy, then any player can play an hour and a half of brilliant tennis and beat him. Sometimes, he needs to be able to win matches, not just allow other players to lose them. Tipsarevic himself said as much, talking about how nobody fears Roddick from the baseline anymore. Andy's out of the top ten once again, though he's still in the top eight in the year-to-date race, so he has a chance of making the year-end championships in London, with a couple good showings at the last two Masters events. But he needs to tweak his gameplan for the big matches, or else he's going to keep getting blown off the court.

Fortunately for Andy, the other Americans did well enough at the tournament to draw attention away from his poor performance on court and worse, his fairly childish reaction to a line judge. Of course, she was stupid too, (we should all be able to tell our right from our left) but her foot fault call was correct. Anyway, Mardy Fish and Sam Querrey both had good runs - one young player and one vet, and another pair had promising showings despite trouble with an injury or an unlucky draw. I'm looking at you, Isner and Blake. Despite not having any Americans in the top ten, we still have players who can win tournaments and be in the conversation - and we'll have one back in the top ten soon enough. There were a handful of performances from really young players that were just amazing - teen Ryan Harrison played great tennis, but choked on the verge of a famous victory. And the 17-year old Jack Sock may have lost in the first round of the main draw, but he won the junior title to become the first U.S. Champ in the boys' event since Andy Roddick. This is not all bad news.

There's still a lot to play for this year - two more Masters events and a handful of 250s and 500s. The Asian swing and the European indoor swing, two oft-overlooked but still great parts of the season. In the coming years, watch for the Asian swing to become more important, not less. I'd keep an eye on the young Japanese player, Kei Nishikori, this year - he played great at the U.S. Open, upsetting Marin Cilic, and he should be back in the top hundred by the time this year is over.

US Open - Super Saturday

2010-09-12T02:54:00.003-04:00

In just the three matches we had today, the full gamut of tennis competitiveness was on display. We had one match which was a complete fiasco, in which one of the players didn't even show up mentally and was never even on the same court as the eventual winner. We had one match where it was a tightly-contested affair, with both players achieving a good level of tennis, but one was simply the better player today, and despite some moments of brief tension, the outcome was never really in doubt. And we had one match that was utterly topsy-turvy, but when it all came together near the end, both players reached an astonishing level of play, and it wasn't clear until the last point was played just who was going to come away with the victory. It was without question a classic match, one of the best of this year's Open, if not the entire year.

Of course, the first refers to the women's final, where Vera Zvonareva managed to be as much of a headcase as she'd been in the past. Credit to her for getting this far, but she really couldn't hold herself together in the pressure of the final, unfortunately. Kim Clijsters played good tennis, with a 17-15 winner to unforced error ratio, but her opponent was at a mere 6-24. It's a shame for Vera, who played unbelievably well to get her, to stumble at this stage once again. There must be something wrong with the Russian tennis development system to produce players with so much skill who have so many problems in situations like these. Dinara Safina, anyone?

The second was the contest between Mikhail Youzhny and Rafael Nadal. The Russian didn't play bad tennis by any means. He played a strong match, considering how much he had to play recently, compared to how fresh Nadal must have been. But Youzhny just didn't have the game to handle Nadal today. He managed one short-lived, last-minute surge of great play to break Nadal in the third set, but was quickly broken back and lost the match. No shame in that, he was just beaten by the better player - short of breaking Rafa's knee with his racket, I don't know what Youzhny could have done out there today.

The third match was a great one. I don't think it was a match for the ages - any match where one of the players loses sets 6-1 and 6-2 could have been a lot closer and more even throughout, but the fifth set was one of the best moments of the Open this year. Federer made a big push at just the moment that you thought he would, having essentially given away the fourth set - while Novak was serving to stay in the match. He got up 15-40, giving himself a pair of match points. Despite having some rough patches of play, it looked like Federer was going to close it out and face Nadal in the final. Everything was going according to the script.

But apparently, Djokovic hadn't read it. Down two match points, he blasted three straight winners - and not just winners, but stone-cold winners, blasted at ridiculous velocity passed a stunned Federer. To make those shots under any circumstances would have been impressive, but to make them down match point in the semifinal of a grand slam against Roger Federer - that's just sick. And Djokovic was apparently so pumped up by it that he was able to break Federer in the next game and serve out the match. Really stunning display by Novak, who hasn't had a performance even close to this one since winning the Aussie Open back in 2008.

That said, I would be shocked if Djokovic can beat Nadal in tomorrow's final. After the monumental effort he had to put forth in the semis, he still gets to play the world's top player with essentially no rest. Nadal still hasn't lost a set and has had a pretty clear path to the final. He'll be fresh and eager to put his stamp on history, and a physically and mentally exhausted Djokovic is exactly who he'll hope to see on the other side of the net. Nadal won't go on walkabout for a set or two at a time the way Federer did. He won't spray his forehand all over the place deep in the fifth set - or any set, for that matter.

It would be one of the greatest performances in tennis history if Djokovic could come back from this and beat Federer tomorrow. I don't see it happening.

US Open Day 12

2010-09-11T04:02:00.002-04:00

The women's semifinals took place today, and they were pretty surprising. Three of the four players were shaky and off their game today - and the one who wasn't was Vera Zvonareva. Top seed Caroline Wozniacki played her first shaky match of the tournament, and the Russian was there to capitalize. Credit to Vera, who played a very strong, solid match from a player who hasn't been known for her consistency in the past, but Wozniacki was strangely not present today. For somebody who has played so solid from day one against some very tough opponents in an array of conditions, I'm not sure what it was that got to her today. But Zvonareva has emerged as one of the best stories of the tournament, since she's made consecutive grand slam finals and has emerged as the Russian. No small feat for a player who was bawling on the court last year, tearing off her own leg strappings after missing six match points against Flavia Pennetta.

And she'll get Kim Clijsters in the final, but after their performances today, I'd like Zvonareva's chances against the two-time champion here. Because Kim and Venus were both shaky today - lots of double faults in key situations from both players. In the second-set tiebreak, Venus's play suddenly became riddled with unforced errors, and she basically gave the set away. Then in the third, Clijsters did the same thing while serving for the match! Very strange performance by both players, on such a big stage.

Honestly, given the way that Kim played yesterday, and the way that Vera did, I have to like the Russian's chances to win her first major tomorrow, and become the first Russian to take home a major title since Kuznetsova last year. Normally, Clijsters would be far and away the favorite, but based on their respective semifinal performances, it's hard to favor the Belgian.

As for the men's semifinals, they appear to be a bit more straightforward. Youzhny faces Nadal, and even though the Russian beat Nadal here, Rafa has since become a different player on this surface. He's managed his schedule better this year, so he comes into the US Open much fitter and on sturdier knees. Rafa is rolling, having won the last 19 matches at majors, and I don't expect this veteran Russian to be able to trouble him tomorrow.

The other semifinal is less straightforward, as Djokovic holds a 5-10 record against Roger. But he's only beaten him once at a Grand Slam, and that was at the Australian Open when Fed was suffering from mono. Djoker has played solid tennis against lower-ranked players this whole year, but he hasn't been able to step up against top players. He's only made a single final, and he won that - but it was in Dubai, where the competition wasn't quite what he can expect tomorrow.

Really, all signs point to a Rafa-Raja final, which is really what everyone (except Djokovic and Youzhny) wants, so let's go ahead with the tennis!

US Open Day 11

2010-09-10T04:22:00.002-04:00

Not going to lie, today's US Open action was pretty predictable. Youzhny was just a little bit too steady for a big-hitting Stan Wawrinka in the first quarterfinal, and Nadal was just in a different league than his opponent Verdasco. The conditions were tough for everybody, but in the end, the winners just managed it a little bit better. It was good drama and pretty good tennis, all things considered, but it was all pretty much according to the script.

As for tomorrow, the women's semifinals are set - I think I like Wozniacki over Zvonareva, and I slightly - just slightly - favor Clijsters over Venus, but that one is much tougher to call. The other interesting match to look at is the doubles final - between the top doubles team of Bob and Mike Bryan in addition to the India-Pakistan team of Bopanna and Qureshi. That's a great story, and whether or not they win (I don't think it's incredibly likely, but there's a chance) it's great attention for the sport of tennis and a great step in the direction of more normalized relations.

US Open Day 10

2010-09-09T04:31:00.002-04:00

There isn't too much to say about today's tennis. All four quarterfinal matches were straight set victories for the favorites. There were moments of tension and some intermittently excellent tennis being played, but the only real story of the day was the wind. There were many commentators in the booth or on-court today who have been regularly attending the U.S. Open for ten, twenty, maybe even thirty years, and the consensus seemed to be that this was the windiest open in memory.

It was bizarrely blustery - I'm amazed that Soderling was able to control his toss as well as he was (and even that wasn't especially well) because Cibulkova and Monfils were absolutely baffled by the shifting, swirling winds. Cibulkova did all right once the point was started, but the Frenchman didn't even know how to hit the ball anymore, it seemed. It's a shame that the conditions are so rough, because it really makes for odd tennis. Not necessarily bad tennis, but strange tennis.

I'm really hoping that tomorrow, we'll have some better weather, because there are a pair of potentially excellent matches. Mikhail Youzhny takes on Stan Wawrinka - it's a match between two comparably talented, fairly accomplished players, even though they've both been top twenty stalwarts with only brief visits to the rarefied air of the top ten. This is a big chance for both guys to a grand slam semifinal - I have to think that Wawrinka is going to be more tired at this point, and his injury may be nagging him. But he's also played better up to this point, so who knows? They both have great one-handed backhands - a fairly rare occurrence to see a pair of one-handers facing off this late in a tourney. This one is a tough one to call.

As much as I'd like to say that both matches are close ones, I'm afraid that the second men's quarter is potentially a bit more one-sided. Despite the fact that Nadal and Verdasco played one of the greatest hard-court matches ever at the Australian Open semifinals in 2009, it's hard for me to believe that Verdasco can equal the effort he put forth that day. He has to be drained after his match with Ferrer, and Nadal has just been playing brutal tennis so far this tournament. Not only has he not dropped a set (neither has Federer) but he hasn't even dropped serve. It would take a monumental effort from Verdasco - I'm not saying he isn't capable of it, but it's just not especially likely at this point.

What is likely, honestly, is a Federer-Nadal final. And really, that's not such a bad thing.

US Open Day 9

2010-09-08T02:32:00.002-04:00

Well, that was definitely one of the most exciting days of the open yet, and there are good odds that will be the peak of tournament, in terms of excitement. Out of six matches, three were absolute nail-biting thrillers - Wawrinka over Querrey in five, Verdasco over Ferrer in five, and Clijsters over Stosur in three.

Sam Querrey and Stan Wawrinka was the only match played entirely during the day, dealing with the worst of the wind. But both Sam and Stan were playing some of their best and gutsiest tennis. Sam was clearly the crowd's and the announcer's sentimental favorite, even if it seemed like Wawrinka's experience might see him through the match. And it did turn out that way, more or less - the key moments of the match came while Sam was serving to stay in the third and fifth sets, and Wawrinka turned up his aggression for one last push, and managed to break Sam both times. Querrey just wasn't as good at managing his energy and playing his best on the biggest points - the American had 15 break points to Wawrinka's 8, but Sam was only able to convert 3, while Stan managed to break Querrey's serve that essential fourth time. Chalk this one up to experience - Sam needs to be able to play those points better, because I think that over the course of the day, Querrey was actually the better player. But Wawrinka knew when and how to attack, and even though he was slightly hobbled and running on empty, he came up with a famous victory today. Here's hoping that Querrey will be inspired by this tight, tough loss, and not discouraged about how close he came.

The other men's match was even more brutal and exciting - as Fernando Verdasco came back from two sets to love down against countryman David Ferrer and won in a fifth set tiebreak, in a match that lasted four hours and 38 minutes. That's devastating for Ferrer, who was also up a break in the fifth set and a minibreak in the tiebreak. Verdasco closed the match with an unbelievable, looping forehand winner up the line off a very strong Ferrer volley at net. A really tough match from both guys, but Verdasco showed why his ranking is so high.

The Clijsters-Stosur match was also a tensely fought affair - but I didn't get to see much of it, I'll admit. I'm looking forward to the Clijsters-Venus semifinal though, I can promise you that.

The other matches on the men's side were less thrilling, as Youzhny closed out Robredo in four and Nadal (predictably) ousted Lopez in straight sets. Now Nadal and Verdasco will play a rematch of their epic semifinal in the Australian Open in 2009, one of the best matches of the year. And Wawrinka gets Youzhny - but the Russian is so much more well-rested physically and mentally, I'll be amazed if Wawrinka can pull another rabbit out of his hat.

Looking ahead to tomorrow, the quarterfinals are underway on the men's side. Novak Djokovic gets Gael Monfils (I may have been confused last night and thought Monfils was going to play Robredo, despite being in the other half of the draw) and the pair have played some thrilling matches. A tough five-setter five years ago, here at the U.S. Open, and the final of the Paris indoor Masters last year. But Novak has won all four - and while Monfils has looked strong this week, he hasn't even played anybody who was seeded, yet. I have to think that the Djoker gets another win and gets back to the semis.

On the other hand, the Federer-Soderling match is a really appetizing contest. Fed had trounced Soderling repeatedly, and thoroughly, up until this year's French Open, where Soderling broke a number of the Swiss's streaks in one blow, including 12 matches straight against the top Swedish player. Now Federer gets a chance for revenge - last year, they played here in Flushing and Federer won, but it was tight towards the end. If Soderling can start off that way, he'll be in with chance. Federer has looked so sharp thus far, and Soderling actually dropped a set against Albert Montanes, which you just can't do if you want to be in the proper form. Fed is still the huge favorite, but it will be interesting. The most interesting Federer match to this point, by far.

On the women's side, I'm afraid to say that the quarterfinal matches are pretty dull. Wozniacki and Zvonareva should both cruise against their unheralded opponents, unless they suffer some injury or complete mental meltdown. Not much more to say about that.

US Open Day 8

2010-09-07T00:47:00.003-04:00

Labor Day is one of the biggest days of the U.S. Open, both in terms of attendance and television viewership. There were some blockbuster matches lined up for today, but now that they've been played, did they live up to their billing?

In short, it's probably the case that the matches weren't quite what one might have hoped for, in terms of the excitement provided. There were some tight matches, but the losing player only won two sets in eight matches. One of which was a bagel - I'm amazed that Yanina Wickmayer could win the first set 6-0, lose the second set in a tiebreak, then lose the third set 6-1. That's almost like the match that Vera Zvonareva lost last year, although this year the Russian's venture onto center court was much more successful. She blasted Petkovic off the court. Her compatriot and former champion Svetlana Kuznetsova was not quite so lucky, as she fell to Dominika Cibulkova in straight sets. The young Slovakian player didn't have to do much but keep the ball in court, as Kuznetsova committed 42 unforced errors and 10 double faults.

The two headlining matches in the day session didn't quite provide as much drama as one might have hoped, either. It seems like all the tennis that Mardy Fish has been playing recently finally caught up to him, as he looked a bit flat against Novak Djokovic, who on the other hand was quite sharp. What could have been (and what the tournament organizers and promoters were certainly hoping would be) a stunning upset turned out to be a by-the-books beatdown by a higher-ranked player. And on the subject of those sorts of matches, Jurgen Melzer put up a great fight against Roger Federer, but it simply wasn't enough. As if talent and experience weren't enough, Federer benefited from two net cord winners during the second set tiebreak. That was plenty to stop Melzer's pushback.

The real headliner match was between Caroline Wozniacki and Maria Sharapova. It was a pretty good match, no question, but once again - the organizers were disappointed in the result. Wozniacki is a talented young player, but the fact is she's not as much of a draw as a player like Sharapova, yet. She probably never will be. Her game is less exciting to watch, but that doesn't mean it's less effective. Today, the returning power of Caroline Wozniacki was better than Sharapova's attacking game. And her course through the rest of the draw is almost comically clear. It will be a shock at this point if we don't have a rematch of last year's final, or at least half of one.

Kim Clijsters still has Venus Williams to contend with in the bottom half of the draw. They're each one win away from facing each other in the semifinals, but those wins are by no means guaranteed. Tomorrow, Venus has to face French Open champ Francesca Schiavone, while Clijsters has to play Sam Stosur, who just beat Elena Dementieva last night - well, technically, earlier this morning. Neither of those matches are guaranteed wins for Clijsters and Venus. This half of the draw has the stronger remaining field, no question. The only interesting question remaining in the tournament on the women's side might just be if these four players beat up on each other so much that whoever faces off against Wozniacki in the final will be too tired to put up enough of a fight.

Meanwhile, we have to determine the second half of the men's quarterfinals. There are five Spaniards playing in four matches, so we'll have at least two in the quarters. Nadal takes on Feliciano Lopez in one of the all-Spanish match-ups. F-Lo beat Nadal on grass at Queens this year, but this is a different situation. Nadal can pass like nobody else, with his high-topspin forehands, and Lopez will make a great target up at net. The much more interesting match is between Verdasco and Ferrer. The pair has played ten times, but only once on hard courts. They're 6-4 overall, which Verdasco leading, and 1-1 on the year. But Ferrer has their only victory on hard courts - albeit that was six years ago. This one is pretty much a pick-em.

The other two matches are also interesting, since with Murray out of that quarter, the semifinal spot is pretty much wide open. Querrey gets Stan Wawrinka, who will be tough to beat if he plays as well as he did against Murray. Querrey is the only player left carrying the U.S. hopes for the men's side after today, but we'll see if that inspires him or if he collapses under the weight. The other side will feature Mikhail Youzhny and Tommy Robredo - an interesting match, as Robredo has benefited from some soft draws and retirements to get this far. Assuming that the Russian doesn't injure himself (or hasn't already) I think he'll be able to oust Robredo, who doesn't really have the weapons to do much against someone who has as much firepower as Youzhny. Youzhny made the semifinals here in 2006, while the other three players in this section have never been that far. Querrey and Wawrinka have never even been past this round at a grand slam, while Robredo is possibly the best active player never to have made it past a GS quarterfinal (he's fighting James Blake for that honor). So here's a lot of guys who have a big chance this week.

US Open Day 7

2010-09-06T01:37:00.002-04:00

We have completed the first week of the U.S. Open, and we have one of our first really big upsets - Stan "the Man" Wawrinka came out on fire and demolished the ball against Andy Murray, smacking his serves and blasting his forehand in addition to his backhand. It's exactly the gameplan that has troubled Andy Murray in the past, as big-hitters like Berdych, Gonzalez, and Verdasco have blown him off the court. And it paid dividends - Wawrinka staged the biggest upset of the tournament, a fine tribute to his new coach Peter Lundgren.

Sam Querrey also pulled off what is on paper a pretty good upset, as he demolished the Spaniard Nicolas Almagro in straight sets. While everyone thought that he had earned a spot against Andy Murray, Wawrinka had other thoughts. It will make for a surprising couple of matches, as all of the top four seeds in that quarter of the draw have now fallen.

Today also had a few players who had put up amazing efforts finally breaking down, as Sergiy Stakhovsky and Michael Llodra retired with injury in the middle of their matches. It's always disappointing when it happens, but it's almost inevitable at this stage of the tournament. Some players just run out of gas getting this far.

It doesn't seem like the Spaniards are in any danger of running out of gas, though, as there are six Spanish men in the last 16, 4 of whom are all in one quarter of the draw. Lopez takes on Nadal while Ferrer gets Verdasco in the Spanish quarter, which guarantees at least one Spanish man in the semifinals. Verdasco, by the way, had a big win over the hot Argentine Nalbandian today, in pretty dominant fashion. It may have been that Nalby was a victim of overhype more than anything else - this was his first Grand Slam in almost two years, and people really considered him a dark horse? Under the circumstances, I'd say he had a fine showing.

Starting tomorrow, all of the men's and women's singles matches will be taking place on either Arthur Ashe or Louis Armstrong courts. We're into the second week now, which means that the stakes are much higher for each and every match. It's also interesting because Tennis Channel has the night matches while CBS gets them during the day, which means you get some slightly less interesting matches schedules at night.

For example, night session ticket holders for Arthur Ashe get Zvonareva and Petkovic. Full disclosure - I was in the stadium last year when Zvonareva completely melted down against Flavia Pennetta, so maybe the Russian doesn't have the best memories of that court and that session. But hopefully she has a little bit more mental fortitude in reserve this year - or perhaps she won't need it, as her unseeded German opponent may not be quite as much of a challenge.

And after that, the Tennis channel subscribers get to watch Roger Federer demolish poor Jurgen Melzer, who despite having the best year of his career at 29 has none of the weapons that one would need to get a win over Roger. It will be a beatdown, I have every confidence in the world.

The day matches are much more exciting (which is why you'll be seeing them on CBS). It starts with Svetlana Kuznetsova against Cibulkova, one of the few unseeded players left in the draw. But after that, Mardy Fish gets Novak Djokovic. I can assure you that Mardy and his camp are hoping for a surprising heat wave to come along, because those are the conditions that Novak finds toughest. Fish has yet to win against Djoker in four tries, but he's had a couple of really tight matches. It would still be a huge upset for Mardy to pull this off, but it's not outside the realm of the possible.

And then, the best match of the tournament thus far - the one that everyone was looking forward to as soon as the draw came out. Maria Sharapova gets top seed Caroline Wozniacki, in a match that will likely determine the finalist from this side of the draw. Wozniacki has looked absolutely brilliant through her first three matches, dropping just three games. But she hasn't really been facing opponents of the same caliber as Sharapova. This will be the real test about whether she's a real contender for this title. And Sharapova wants to remind everyone that she's one of the few former champions in this field. This will be a cracker of a match.

The matches on Armstrong are also good, though they probably don't have quite the same star power - it starts with Monfils against Gasquet in an all-French meeting, which will feature a lot of shot-making. They're 2-2 against each other up to this point. Then Wickmayer gets Kanepi go at it (tough to say that there's going to be a lot of interest in that one, honestly) and then Robin Soderling gets Albert Montanes. It's probably the biggest mis-match tomorrow. I don't give Montanes much of a chance.

US Open Day 6

2010-09-05T02:51:00.002-04:00

At the start of the middle weekend, there were not a lot of upsets today. There were a few close matches, but only one that was really tight on each side of the draw. Mardy Fish beat French veteran Arnaud Clement in the fifth set, and Yanina Wickmayer beat Patty Schnyder in a third-set tiebreak. Beyond that, it was a good day, but perhaps not too stunning. It was extremely windy throughout the day, preventing a lot of players from putting their best tennis on display.

It's always interesting - as a grand slam progresses, less and less action is actually taking place in each round. On the other hand, each meeting has more and more importance for the competitors, and because of the seedings, you expect to get bigger clashes at these middle to later stages. So there is more potential for excitement, but if a match turns out to be a bit of a dud, there are fewer places to look for that excitement. Today, Arthur Ashe was stuffed full of straight-set victories. As I mentioned above, Mardy Fish and Yanina Wickmayer provided some excellent, well-fought, tight matches, but for the most part, things went mostly as expected. Jelena Jankovic was upset, but with how she had played in the first two rounds, that couldn't have come as much of a shock.

So let's go ahead and look to tomorrow's action, and see how things are shaping up. At least on paper, tomorrow looks to be a pretty spectacular middle Sunday.

The day starts off with Ana Ivanovic, former world number one and French Open champion, taking on defending champion Kim Clijsters. That's a pretty enticing first round match - it would be Ivanovic's biggest win in a long, long time, if she can pull off the upset. I'll admit that I'm not expecting it, but it could happen, if she could capture some of her old magic. After that, Venus Williams gets her first test, against Israeli Shahar Peer. Venus has looked great through three rounds thus far, but she hasn't really played anyone of consequence. This could be interesting.

After that, Nadal gets his first day match, and he gets the Frenchman Gilles Simon, who has a win over Nadal on hardcourts a couple years ago. He hasn't been at that level for a while, but he has been playing well this week. I'd like to see him back in the area of being seeded at these sorts of events, but I don't expect him to be able to handle Nadal's ball tomorrow.

In the night session, Youzhny gets Isner, an interesting match. Youzhny once made the semis here at the US Open, but it's Isner's home turf, and he is anxious to show everyone what he's made of. He needs to follow up last year's win over Roddick with another big win, and an upset over the Russian in an Arthur Ashe night match. Considering how much press he got at Wimbledon, he's going to have a lot of people rooting for him. And assuming his serve and ankle hold up, he could pull this one out.

And after that, we get Elena Dementieva against Sam Stosur, which really feels more like a semifinal than a fourth round. I don't know who's going to come out on top in that one, but it's almost certainly the most exciting women's matches I've seen on the schedule so far.

On the other courts, things are maybe not quite as rarefied, but still plenty exciting. Schiavone will try to maintain her stupendous form against Pavlyuchenkova. It will be interesting to see how far Schiavone can make it - she seems to be finally over her French Open hangover. And then Sam Querrey plays Nicolas Almagro, a match that will feature a ton of big-hitting and big serves - the winner will be determined by who can pull off their shots more frequently. And then Andy Murray gets Stan Wawrinka... I can hardly believe that's on Louis Armstrong. They played an amazing match at Wimbledon last year, and it may be Murray's first real test. Stan Wawrinka is a former top ten player, and certainly a step up from the level of play offered by Dustin Brown, no offense intended to the top Jamaican player of course.

And on the grandstand - the grandstand! - David Nalbandian takes on Fernando Verdasco, a match which I think could be an absolutely amazing match, even if it doesn't feature any really big-name players, from the perspective of your average US Open attendee. And the Stakhovsky takes on Feliciano Lopez and Robredo takes on Llodra. Those are not going to be star-studded matches, but they should be a lot of fun. Three of those four players are capable of frequently serving and volleying, with only Robredo usually staying on the baseline. This would be an excellent day to plant yourself courtside on the grandstand.

Ferrer also takes on Daniel Gimeno-Traver, but they put that on court 11 for a reason - Ferrer will dismantle his countryman, I assure you of that. That's the match I see tomorrow which has the lowest chance of being an exciting contest. The rest all have the potential to be classics.

US Open Day 5

2010-09-04T02:48:00.004-04:00

It's a shame about Denis Istomin. The guy is playing the biggest match of his life - against the number one player in the world, Rafael Nadal, on one of the biggest stages in the tennis world - night match at Arthur Ashe stadium - and he plays the best point of the tournament, possibly the best point of his whole life, to go up 5-1 in the second set tiebreak, after getting thoroughly outplayed in the point. He switches sides pumped up and thrilled. And then he doesn't win another point in the breaker, dropping the set 7-5. That's got to hurt. All in all, it was a very strong performance from the top Uzbek player (he's actually 390 places higher than the next best player from his country) and I hope he'll be encouraged by how close he got, rather than disappointed by the fact that he just fell short. He's been making steady progress since he got a wildcard into the Australian Open in 2006 and got blitzed by Roger Federer in the first round. There's no reason he shouldn't find himself seeded for these sorts of tournaments in the not-too-distant future.

Speaking of players who should be encouraged by near misses, American teen Ryan Harrison missed out on three match points against Sergiy Stakhovsky in the fifth set tiebreak. The first two were on the Ukrainian players serve, but then the American had one point on his serve and - disappointingly - he double-faulted. Really, it shouldn't be a shock. He's just eighteen, he had never played a five set match before, and he surely had never had a crowd rooting for him like this one was. The nerves just got to him. It's totally understandable - all it says is that he's not ready to compete at these stages, for these sorts of stakes, yet. It's too much, too fast, and that's fine. He'll be back - I expect by this time next year, he'll be in the top hundred (or so) and won't have to fuss about not getting a wildcard and needing to qualify. But he has the potential to be the next big thing for U.S. men's tennis - he has the game for it, and it's an excitingly different style of tennis when compared to the other young Americans, big and tall guys bombing serves like Isner and Querrey. Harrison plays fast, smart, and powerful tennis, and I think he's got a ton of upside potential for the future.

That was really the dominant storyline from today's tennis by a pretty wide margin. The only other particularly noteworthy result I can find is Gilles Simon upsetting 29th seed Phillip Kohlschreiber, but Simon is a former top-ten player who loves this surface and is just getting his act together (and apparently, he just became a father!). It was always going to be a pick-em. This was a day when the favorites reigned supreme - on Arthur Ashe stadium, the losing player didn't even win one set in five matches. On Louis Armstrong, Chiudinelli won one set against Isner, but otherwise it was also a sweep.

The only other result of note is that Julien Benneteau hurt his left wrist so badly while trying to hit a double-handed backhand that he couldn't even toss the ball up to serve, and was forced to retire from his match, in the middle of a tiebreak. I've never seen that happen before, and it appears to be rare enough that the US Open website isn't prepared for that eventuality either, and can't figure out how to show the tiebreak score properly.

There weren't even any three-set matches on the women's side, today. That was quite a change from the way the week had been going up to this point.

But that should change in the next days. The real contenders are starting to run into each other as we reach the third round in the men's draw, and get ready for the fourth round on the women's side. Without further ado, let's start looking ahead to Saturday...

The Arthur Ashe schedule is particularly mouth-watering, I have to say. Jelena Jankovic, a former finalist here, was severely troubled by her first two opponents, and things presumably won't be getting any easier against Estonian 31st-seed Kaia Kanepi. Upset watch is on high alert for this match. After that, Maria Sharapova gets an American teen, the Melanie Oudin of this year - Beatrice "Tracy" Capra. Oudin actaully ousted Sharapova in last year's US Open, but that wasn't the same Maria. I don't expect her to go out in the same set of circumstances this year, but it will be fun to see what the American can do.

Federer gets Frenchman Paul-Henri Mathieu, and the Fed is 4-0 against the Frenchman, but this is actually the toughest opposition that Fed has faced up to this point. Even though Mathieu is currently ranked outside the top hundred, he is the former world number 12 and a one-time top prospect for French tennis. But in four meetings, the Frenchman has only been able to win one set. I don't know how much Mathieu can muster for this one.

The night match, on the other hand, that's quite a different story. James Blake and Novak Djokovic are facing off, and the two have both played some of their best tennis at night matches in Arthur Ashe. This one could be a thriller. The best match of James's life is arguably the night match he ended up losing to Andre Agassi in 2005. He is eager to show that he's back, and that people who were sending him off into the sunset were doing so prematurely. But Djokovic, after escaping the first round in Houdini-like fashion and seeing the other top seeds in his section topple like dominoes, surely wants to remind everyone that he's still here, as well. This could be a statement match from either player. And I remember the night match Blake played against Del Potro earlier this year at the Aussie Open, and that was an absolutely brutal five-set thriller. There's no guarantee that's what we'll get tomorrow, but it's a possibility.

Speaking of forgotten contenders, after that we get former champion Svetlana Kuznetsova against Kirilenko, and that's another tough one. Could be some fireworks there, as well.

On the other courts, I'm excited about Soderling against Thiemo De Bakker - the young Dutch player is going to start making noise at some point in the future. Maybe not tomorrow, though. Mardy Fish takes on the French vet Arnaud Clement, who is still tough as nails despite being 32. Fish has been playing great, but that's a tricky opponent.

On grandstand, Monfils and Tipsarevic face off in the morning - expect some shotmaking in that match. Those guys are both really fun, exciting players to watch. I lean towards Monfils, but Tipsy played amazing ball against Roddick, and Monfils may give him just as many spinny, high-bouncing balls to take big cuts at. Melzer-Ferrero is another interesting match, as those guys are both vets, and they're playing for the dubious honor of getting Roger Federer in the next round. Who wants to lose on center court, gentlemen?

Gasquet and Nishikori are both in action as well, and while they both had stunning upsets in the last round, I wonder if they'll be able to follow it up with another win. Ryan Harrison couldn't quite pull it off, but maybe one or both of them can. I also like that Melanie Oudin and Ryan Harrison are playing mixed doubles together. Just try not to root for them, I dare you.

We're getting into the middle weekend now - Labor Day weekend, of course. A big time for the Open. Tons of fans on the grounds, juniors are getting underway, and the big-name clashes are starting to come in droves. For an Open that's already been pretty chock-full of action and surprises, it may only get more exciting from here. Or it could end up being like Wimbledon this year, which had an amazing first week but became fairly predictable in the second. Here's hoping otherwise.

US Open Day 4

2010-09-03T01:20:00.003-04:00

As the second round of the tournament continued, the rash of upsets kept on going as well. That seems to have been the theme of this tournament, so far - at least, the story of the upsets runs parallel to the story of the incredible heat. I'm willing to bet that those two facts are related.

For example, the heat was for sure a factor in the match between Marin Cilic and Kei Nishikori. It's a great match for Nishikori, who followed up his win two years ago over David Ferrer by ousting another seeded player. I don't know how well the Japanese 20-year old is going to be able to bounce back for his next match, because he must have been whipped. The match with Cilic lasted for just a shade under five hours, and in 95 degree heat, that is absolutely brutal. A tough loss for Cilic, who had a good run here last year, but has not been on his best form recently.

Another upset featured Richard Gasquet dominated Nikolay Davydenko. The Russian had looked great in his first round match, but Gasquet was playing the best tennis I've seen him play for a couple years. He was striking the ball beautifully, moving like Federer, and serving bombs. Davydenko just wasn't up for the challenge, amazingly. It'll be interesting to see if Gasquet can keep it up.

Tomaz Bellucci also lost, but he was facing big-serving South African Kevin Anderson, and that's a match that could have gone either way. Belluci lost it in a fifth-set tiebreaker, which is a situation that favors the six-foot-eight-inch player for sure. Bellucci is still maturing as a player, but he'll make a run here at some point in the future.

Ricardas Berankis, a twenty-year old from Lithuania, very nearly upset Jurgen Melzer - the former US Open junior champ was up a break in the fifth set, but he couldn't close it out, and lost it 7-5. Still, a very encouraging performance, and we haven't heard the last of him, either.

Speaking of close calls, Bethanie Mattek-Sands served for the match against Andrea Petkovic and had multiple match points, but just when she needed it, her first serve deserted her and she couldn't close it out. It was very nearly a big win, but the Americans did have something else to be excited about. Teenager Beatrice Capra upset Arevane Rezai - even though Melanie Oudin couldn't follow up last year's performance, we may have another U.S. teen breakout story for this year. Also on the women's side, Aggie Radwanska, the ninth seed, lost today to Chinese player Shuai Peng.

The other top players pretty much cruised. Wozniacki didn't even drop a game. Federer, Sharapova, Mardy Fish, Kuznetsova, Soderling, and Ferrero barely did. James Blake won too, as did Novak Djokovic. And they get to face each other in the next round! That could be a fun one. Jelena Jankovic also came through a tough match, just barely.

Tomorrow, we finish up the men's second round, and the women's third round starts off. That means that the seeds can start meeting, if they both made it that far. It happened a couple times.

The line-up on Ashe is pretty great - Dementieva plays Hantuchova, Clijsters plays Kvitova, and Andy Murray plays the exciting Jamaican Dustin Brown. I can't imagine Brown being able to do much against Murray, but it should be a fun match to watch, regardless. In the night session, Venus Williams and Rafael Nadal should have relatively easy going against their lower-ranked opponents. Istomin might be able to briefly challenge the world number one, but it would be a shocker if he even won a set.

There are three more Americans in action - Isner, Querrey, and Harrison, all of whom have winnable matches tomorrow. All three were strong in their first match, but they need to keep it up. Other matches to watch are are Ivanovic-Razzano, Schiavone-Bondarenko, and Peer-Pennetta on the women's side. On the men's side, check out Youzhny-Sela, Kohlschreiber-Simon, Ferrer-Becker, and Hanescu-Llodra. Benneteau-Robredo could be fun, too. This tournament is coming together nicely on the men's side, no question. I sort of hope that the rash of upsets takes a break tomorrow, because the third round matches we'll get on Sunday if things go by the seedings are going to be stellar. It would be a shame to spoil too many of them.

But no matter what, this is going to be a great weekend.

US Open Day 3

2010-09-01T23:36:00.002-04:00

Well, up until this last match of the night, this was a pretty mild third day at the U.S. Open. Whereas yesterday, there were any number of incredibly tight matches and upsets, things had mostly been going to form, until this last match of the night session. But I'll get to that in a minute.

The day started with a very strange event, as Victoria Azarenka passed out on the grandstand court, some twenty five minutes into her match. It was assumed to be heat-related, but it turned out that she had fallen during her warm-up, and was ultimately diagnosed with a minor concussion. Here's hoping that she has a swift recovery and that it isn't anything more serious.

The other top ten seed to fall was Tomas Berdych on the men's side, who was just outplayed by Michael Llodra on the grandstand. The Wimbledon finalist - and one of the favorites to go deep into this tournament - out in the first round. The last time that happened was when Roddick lost to Gilles Muller in 2005.

Speaking of Roddick, Andy played some pretty poor tennis and showed some poor sportsmanship in his loss to Janko Tipsarevic. It was a stellar show of shot-making from Janko Tipsarevic, but Roddick did everything he could to allow the Serb to hit winner after winner, giving him medium-speed, high-spin balls that just sat up and asked to be blasted down the line. Even after he got riled up after being correctly called for a foot fault (despite being informed that it was called on the wrong foot) he still wasn't getting enough pace on his shots, and Tipsarevic took full advantage. Roddick looked listless for a big chunk of that match, and it seemed like the mono may have had something to do with it. But the American said it himself, that once he decided to show up, it didn't really matter how much he had in the tank, he was going to give it his all. It certainly wasn't enough today. At 28 years old and with the younger players in the game more and more able to handle his groundstrokes, it's really a shame to essentially lose a summer to a disease like mono. And that's assuming he can come back - Mario Ancic has pretty much been out of the game for the better part of four or five years, since he first came down with it. I hate to say it, but we may be witnessing the twilight of the American's career.

On the other side of her career trajectory, Melanie Oudin also lost today, but she maybe was just feeling the pressure of trying to repeat her magical run from last year. She was clearly feeling tight - she wasn't moving her feet, and she wasn't hitting through her shots. But when she was forgetting about the pressure, she was playing some good ball. And she's still only 18-years old, so she has plenty of time to adjust to being more than a Cinderella story.

In better news for the American fans, John Isner and Sam Querrey both won today. The bigger news for that side was that 18-year old Ryan Harrison beat 15th-seeded Ivan Ljubicic in his opening round match, the first time a U.S. teen beat a top-20 player since Roddick himself did it way back in 2001. But Donald Young and Jack Sock, two heralded young U.S. players, both lost pretty convincingly. All in all, a mixed bag for the U.S. side.

The other big upset of the day was Virginia Razzano beating out Marion Bartoli, but considering everything else that was going on, it's tough to pay too much heed to this loss, since Bartoli has always been and up-and-down player.

Tomorrow, we'll continue with second-round action - some appetizing match ups on offer, including Blake-Polansky, Davydenko-Gasquet, Nishikori-Cilic, and Melzer-Berankis. I wonder if things will continue to be as tense and upset-happy as they've been so far? We're only through one round on the men's side (plus two 2nd round matches) and one and a half rounds on the women's side, and we've already lost 18 of the 64 seeds. That's almost thirty percent! Pretty brutal stuff, out there.

US Open Day 2

2010-09-01T00:02:00.002-04:00

Day 2 was completely, even weirdly packed with tight matches and upsets. We're still in the first round, here! It's expected that people should be cruising through their matches, as often as not. Well, that wasn't really the case today. I can go through pretty much every court and talk about at least one big upset or near miss.

On the main stage, the day session went about as long as it could have. Jelena Jankovic nearly lost to Romanian teen Simona Halep, who actually served for the match in the third set, but couldn't close it out. After that, Djokovic was down two sets to one, and a break in the fourth set, while clearly hurting from the heat. The sun started to set, the court cooled down, and Djokovic somehow managed to pull that match out in five. And then Jarmila Groth took the first set from Sharapova with some hard-hitting tennis before the former champ managed to come through. There were stretches where all of those players, who are contenders to go deep this fortnight, looked like they were down for the count.

The top seeds, who made up the night matches on Ashe, were never in quite the same dire straits. Nadal won in three sets against Teymuraz "Tsunami" Gabashvili, but the Russian held his own for about 30 games, which is no small accomplishment. But for a couple missed shots in the tiebreaks, that could have been a completely different match. Caroline Wozniacki breezed past her opponent, the current NCAA champ who has never played a pro match. Despite the fact that they're the same age, the gap in experience was vast.

Louis Armstrong had a trio of seeded players upset, shockingly. Marcos Baghdatis, who had a great summer and nearly won the U.S. Open series, fell in the fifth set to French vet Arnaud Clement. Disappointing for Marcos, who has never had a good tournament in New York. I find that odd, since the conditions aren't that much different than the Australian, where he made the final. After his loss, one of the flying Bondarenko sisters upset Na Li, the first of the top ten seeds to fall on either side. She was clearly troubled by the heat, which was the deciding factor in a lot of today's matches. Blake and Zvonareva both won, but then Nadia Petrova lost to the German Petkovic in a third-set tiebreak. Petrova's section of the draw is not especially strong, and I had her getting through to the quarters, so that was not a strong performance.

The Grandstand managed to avoid any actual upsets, but the first three matches were all damn close. Kuznetsova needed three sets to get past 39-year old Kimiko Date Krumm. After that, Mardy Fish has a bizarrely topsy-turvy match in which he needed five sets to win, but in the three sets he won, he dropped only a single game. And then Fabio Fognini nearly repeated his upset of Fernando Verdasco (the Italian won at Wimbledon in the first round) but Hot Sauce was too strong, getting past Fognini 6-3 in the fifth set. The less said about Coco Vandeweghe's subsequent one and love drubbing by Lisicki, the better.

The outside courts were maybe not quite as exciting as the main show courts, but they still had more than their fair share of shockers. Mirjana Lucic beat Alicia Molik, and while they're both veterans, Lucic has essentially been out of the top level of competition for seven years. Any win from here is an upset, but it's good to have her back. Tamira Paszek beat Lucie Safarova, and Peter Polansky beat Juan Monaco. David Nalbandian nearly went down the same way that Baghdatis did, but the Argentine managed to get past Rik De Voest in five sets. He probably could have won in four, if not for a net cord winner on set point during the tiebreak. Good for him for recovering from that setback.

On lucky court 13, two seeded players fell. Jeremy Chardy beat Ernests Gulbis, who was hating the temperature and playing in the heat of the early afternoon. If he can either find a way to beat the heat or get a favorable weather report during his two weeks here, he can do well at this tournament. As it stands, he was winless in the grand slams this year. On the plus side, there's no where to go but up. Radek Stepanek also lost on court 13, but considering his injuries of late and the quality of his first round opponent, I was not particularly surprised by this result.

Way out on court 15, Lourdes Dominguez Lino upset 30th seed Yaroslav Shvedova. I know what you're thinking - Shvedova really got a seed? Still, it's an upset. That's ten seeds out in the first round, and it's not even quite done yet! Pretty brutal, if you ask me.

Looking ahead to tomorrow, we'll conclude the first round on the men's side, and get the ball rolling on the second round. We have yet to see Andy Murray, Sam Querrey, John Isner, Almagro, or Wawrinka. They're all in action tomorrow, in addition to a trio of young Americans who each have a shot at an upset.

Jack Sock takes on Marco Chiudinelli - he's the least experienced of the three American young guns, but he also has the easiest opponent, arguably. I don't know enough about Sock's game to know if he's got a chance, which makes me think it's not terribly likely. Ryan Harrison gets Ivan Ljubicic, which is a pretty brutal first round draw, but we haven't heard much Ivan since he won the first hard-court Masters event earlier this year. It's a battle of youthful vim and vigor against age and experience. It would be a big upset for Harrison, no doubt. But he's got a shot. The most anticipated of these matches is going to be Donald Young against Gilles Simon, which is another tough one. Simon is a former top ten player who's hoping to get back to his former heights, and Young has yet to live up to his potential. This one could go either way, depending on which Simon shows up, and how Young can deal with the pressure. He's not getting any younger.

If you're looking for fun matches, check out Sela-Malisse on court 7, and definitely go to see Dustin Brown open the day on court 8. He's a ton of fun to watch, and he can play some great ball. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen that often and when it does it doesn't last for very long, but it's great to see if you can catch it. He's a tremendously fun player who I hope develops some much-needed consistency in the coming years. Also, watch for Stakhovsky-Luczak tomorrow. Stakhovsky is another player who needs to average out his performance from day to day. He won a tournament last week, but he did that the week before Wimbledon as well, and he lost in the first round there. In fact, he's only won a single Grand Slam match in his entire career.

Tomorrow's night matches are pretty exciting, as they feature Kim Clijsters and Andy Roddick. Clijsters goes up against Australian teen Sally Peers, while Roddick gets the significantly more formidable challenge of facing Janko Tipsarevic, who bested him at Wimbledon in 2008 and pushed Federer to five sets at the Australian Open that year. Tipsy is a legitimate threat, particularly if Roddick is not feeling completely fresh. The conditions of a night match should suit Roddick, for this sort of a contest. It will be the first of many tests that the top American will have to pass if he hopes to make a run this year, considering how brutal he may find his section of the draw. Here's hoping it's a good one!

US Open Day 1

2010-08-31T00:52:00.002-04:00

The first day of tennis at Flushing Meadows was a fine way to start us off - lots of exciting tennis, but not a lot of upsets to write home about. On both the men's and women's side, there were only a pair of upsets, both male vets who couldn't make it to the second round. Fernando Gonzalez had to retire against Brian Dabul, and while Lleyton Hewitt didn't actually throw in the towel, he surely faded pretty severely in the final set against Paul-Henri Mathieu. It's the first time that Hewitt's lost in the first round of a Grand Slam tournament since Wimbledon in 2003, when he fell to Ivo Karlovic as the defending champion.

Aside from that, the most notable loss of the day was last year's top seed on the women's side, Dinara Safina, who fought hard but couldn't quite hold it together against Daniela Hantuchova. Despite her disappointing performance here, I see promising signs in her game of late. She may never again ascend to the heights she was at last year at this time, but I can easily see her making it back into the top twenty, maybe ten.

Melanie Oudin really played well in her opening round, which was admittedly against a player of even less experience, but still, with all the pressure she had, I wasn't sure she could handle it. Credit to the teen. The other top players mostly cruised against undistinguished opponents, except for Robin Soderling, who was pushed hard by Austrian qualifier Andreas Haider-Maurer (I know, 'who?') into a fifth set. But his experience saw him through in the end. Gael Monfils also needed a fifth set to beat American vet Robbie Kendrick. There was a questionable call in that match, but it didn't quite turn the tide in the end - the fact that Kendrick thought it went against him was what brought him down, in my opinion. The other two five setters of the day saw Jurgen Melzer get past Dmitry Tursunov (still hoping for his comeback!) and Albert Montanes over Przynsiezny, 6-0 in the fifth.

Looking ahead to tomorrow, we'll see Djokovic, Jankovic, Sharapova, Nadal and Wozniacki on Arthur Ashe. Not a bad line-up - there's an outside chance that Gabashvili could trouble Nadal, maybe a 20% chance of a close match. Djokovic-Troicki could be tight, but I don't give the junior Serb much of a chance of upsetting his countryman. Really, the matches on Armstrong and the Grandstand are much more exciting.

Baghdatis plays Clement, a French vet who has played some amazing matches of his career, but it's been a while since he's made much noise. Kateryna Bondarenko plays Na Li after that, followed by James Blake against Kristof Vliegen. Blake's going to have a ton of support, but that may not be enough for him. He seems like he's not fully recovered from his surgery, and he needs to be in top form considering his style of play. I hope he can win a couple of rounds, but it will be tough. Fish should have a better time with Jan Hajek, and Svetlana Kuznetsova should be able to handle the tricky Japanese player Kimiko Date Krumm.

On the outside courts, there are some intriguing match-ups. This is Robbie Ginepri's favorite tournament, and he has a good chance against Argentine Eduardo Schwank. On court 7, watch for a potential (though unlikely) upset as Dolgopolov plays Ferrer. He's got a chance, but whether or not he wins tomorrow's match, you'll hear more from Dolgopolov in the future. Also, put an upset watch on Peter Polansky over Juan Monaco, and Julien Benneteau over Radek Stepanek.

I don't necessarily see another upset on Court 13, but the first match could be a cracker, between French Jeremy Chardy and Ernests Gulbis. I lean towards the seeded Latvian, but there could be an upset in the cards if Gulbis isn't at his best, because he can easily get frustrated and go off the boil.

There are certainly plenty of fun matches to keep an eye on tomorrow.

US Open Men's Draw Preview

2010-08-30T03:35:00.003-04:00

Okay, and now for my look at the USO Men's draw. I'm the first to admit that I have more knowledge of tennis on the men's side, so I can look at the draw with more granular attention than I did on the women's side. Let me take a look at each eighth of the draw, to see the interesting match-ups and storylines to watch for over the next two weeks.

The top seed is Rafael Nadal, on a two-Grand Slam winning streak, and the undisputed number one in the world. However, Nadal has never made it past the semifinals here, and in all honesty, I don't think he will this time around, either. His draw is absolutely brutal. He opens against Teymuraz Gabashvili, and while that should be an easy match-up, it will all depend on how Nadal plays. If Nadal doesn't play aggressive and is satisfied with a lot of top-spin from behind the baseline, Gabashvili will eat that up. That was exactly how Roddick played him at the French Open, and the Russian demolished the high-bouncing, high-topspin groundstrokes with a vengeance. But I'll assume he gets past that match, and then potentially gets Uzbek Denis Istomin in the second round. The New Haven finalist may actually be Nadal's easiest opponent. Because after that, he could get Gilles Simon, who has beaten Rafa before. After that, he might get Feliciano Lopez or Ivan Ljubicic, both of whom have beaten him this year. He could also find himself facing Stakhovsky or Harrison, two untested but talented young players. And that's just to get to the quarterfinals! For Nadal to make smooth progress, the players who have the weapons to beat him are going to have to get beaten - if Kohlschreiber is his third round opponent, that works in the Spaniard's favor. I do think he'll make it through, but he could be tired enough by that point to fade just as the tournament enters its toughest stage. In this section, watch for Stakhovsky, who is unbelievably streaky, but has only won one match at a Grand Slam in his whole career, as well as U.S. teen Ryan Harrison, who opens against Ljubicic in one of the best 1st rounds of the tourney. Gilles Simon also gets Donald Young in the opener, and while I favor the Frenchman, the young Young could pull that off.

Pretty much no matter what, Nadal's opponent in the quarters is going to be somebody who can handle him on this surface. I see four players who have the potential to make it out of this part of the draw - the two top seeds are also Spaniards who do well on hard courts, Fernando Verdasco and David Ferrer, who actually beat Nadal here three years ago. Verdasco, of course, played Nadal brutally tight at the Aussie Open in 2009. The other two seeds might even be tougher, though. The Argentine vet David Nalbandian still has the potential to play like a world-beater, and this is his first slam since his comeback. He's a former semifinalist here, and he could be the one who Nadal finds facing him in the quarters - that's bad news for Nadal, who has had trouble with Nalby in the past, despite their even head-to-head, both of Nadal's wins were scraped out by small margins, and Nalby ran away with both of his matches. The real wildcard here is the young Latvian Ernests Gulbis, who won his first tournament in the spring, had an amazing clay court run, and then was injured and essentially missed the French and Wimbledon. But he is so good that he could beat Nadal here. Other than those four guys, there aren't a lot of other guys to watch - but you may want to keep an eye on Dolgopolov and Chardy, who open against Ferrer and Gulbis. Beyond that, I like Jarkko Nieminen, but it's hard to think that his best days aren't behind him.

The next sectino of the draw belongs to Andy Murray, but it could be a tough run for him. This is his favorite tournament and the one he'd most want to win, but he'll have to get through some tough contenders to do it this year. His first couple rounds are cake - Dustin Brown is fun and flashy, but I don't see him troubling Andy. After that, though, things get tricky. His third round opponent will probably be Wawrinka, who has a new coach (Peter Lundgren) and has beaten Murray three times - and their last match at Wimbledon was a real nail-biter. After that, the Scot will probably get either Nicolas Almagro or Sam Querrey, both of whom are big-hitters who can trouble Andy if he gets too defensive. Sam even beat Murray earlier this year, and is just aching for a big win at a grand slam. I still like Murray's chances of making the quarters, but his road is going to be tough.

If Murray makes it to the quarters, though, I definitely like him finding his way through to the semis. The bottom eighth of the top half of the draw is not that strong, honestly. Two of the seeds may be hobbled by injury - Radek Stepanek just came off a long injury hiatus, and Isner rolled his ankle a couple of weeks ago. Youzhny is a former semifinalist here, but since then hasn't made it past the second round, and he has a killer opening round against Kazakh Andrey Golubev. Tomas Berdych is the only real contender in this section, and he might still be hung over from his Wimbledon final loss. He's got a tough first round against Michael Llodra, too. Keep an eye on the Sela-Malisse match, as well, and see how well 17-year old Jack Sock can do against Marco Chiudinelli. I don't expect much, but if he can pull off a win, there may be more to his future than I had thought. I like Berdych getting through here, but a surprise quarterfinalist is probably just as likely.

The next section of the draw is by seeding Davydenko's, but it's really Roddick's. The Russian, despite playing brilliant tennis at the end of last year, hasn't really gotten his mojo back, and Roddick has a very strong record against him. Assuming that Roddick is really recovered from the mono he had - because if that's the case, all bets are off. Davydenko has a tough opener against American Michael Russell, and then he might get Richard Gasquet, followed by either Kevin Anderson or Thomaz Bellucci? That's just brutal. As for Roddick, I like his chances, even though his opponents could line up as a rogue's gallery of his past vanquishers - after an easy first round, he might get Tipsarevic, who beat him at Wimbledon in 2008, one of his career's lowest points (until this year...), and then Monfils, who beat him at the French Open in 2009, and then Gasquet, who beat him at Wimbledon in 2006. But honestly, none of these guys have been in top form recently. The biggest challenge for Roddick might be if he got South African Kevin Anderson in the round of 16, since he's the same type of player as John Isner, who beat him here last year. In any case, I like Roddick making the quarters, as long as he's healthy. Watch Tipsarevic's match against Olivier Rochus in the first round, as well as Anderson against Somdev Devvaramn. Both of those could be fun outside court viewing.

The next quarter of the draw is for the chance of (probably) playing Roddick in the quarterfinals, and I have to think that Roddick is thrilled to see Djokovic there. Except for an ugly match here in 2008, Roddick has pretty much dominated Djokovic in these conditions - that is, hot hardcourt quarterfinals. Of course, it's no guarantee that Djoker will get that far, because he has a tough section. After an opening match against compatriot Viktor Troicki, things get a bit easier for the Serb in the second round. But the third round might get tougher - James Blake is hoping to get back on his feet after a disappointing year, and he loves this tournament. I think Blake can get that far, but he would have to find some of the old magic to even come closer to beating Djokovic. The real danger comes from the other two seeds in the draw, a pair of great guys who are both experiencing career renaissances - Fish and Baghdatis. They started off the year playing great matches back to back in Sydney and Brisbane, and I would be shocked if they don't meet again in the third round. The other players in that little part of the draw who could make noise might be Ginepri and Clement, but I don't think so. Djokovic will get the winner of that match, and either way there could be an upset in the cards.

Moving on to Soderling's section of the draw - and it really is the Swede's section, since he doesn't have a lot of competition. Really, this is probably the weakest quarter of the draw. So Soderling could get Marin Cilic, who has been underperforming ever since making the Aussie Open semis, and Fernando Gonzalez, who is just back from an injury layoff and has only played one match since the French Open, or Albert Montanes, who has had 82% of his career match wins on clay. There are some floaters in this section, but nobody has proven themselves yet - somebody would have to go on a groundbreaking run. Taylor Dent is here, but his comeback has not quite been going to plan, and he got smoked by the Swede earlier this year at Roland Garros. Thiemo De Bakker is an interesting player to keep an eye on, but this isn't his favorite surface, yet. There are three young guns who I think have a very good chance of getting a couple wins - Carsten Ball, Milos Raonic (who play each other in the first round), and Kei Nishikori. The young Japanese player actually has a shot at upsetting Cilic, if he plays as well as he's capable. In any case, it won't matter, because Soderling's going to make the quarterfinals...

... where he's going to find Roger Federer. The final section of the draw is going to be a walk through the park for Fed, at least through to the quarters. This is despite having to potentially get through a pair of former world number ones. Fed's first two rounds are barely worth mentioning, and if he loses a set to either Dabul, Beck, or Berrer, then we'll really have to worry. After that, he could get Lleyton Hewitt, who may have beaten him recently in Halle, but that was something of a fluke - a weird letdown from the Fed, which we won't see here in the U.S. Open. And after that, he might get JC Ferrero, who (can you believe this?) is the only person in the draw who has a win against Federer at the U.S. Open. The other players who have done so are Andre Agassi, Max Mirnyi, and Juan Martin Del Potro. But Ferrero is not at his best on hardcourts anymore, and if he even makes it to Federer, he'll get smoked. Fed's through to a quarterfinal match-up with Soderling, which will at least be interesting. The other players to watch in this section are Jurgen Melzer and his first round opponent, Dmitry Tursunov, as well as Lithuanian teen and former junior champ Ricardas Berankis. But let's not kid ourselves, this section is all about Federer...

As for tomorrow's matches, it will be good to see what kind of form Federer and Roddick are in, but don't expect many upsets. Hewitt has a potentially tough match against PH Mathieu, but I still like Rusty in that one. Taylor Dent will be thrilled to be back on the grandstand, the site of one of his career's best wins last year against Ivan Navarro. Berankis plays Ryan Sweeting, and that could be an interesting match, and so could Melzer-Tursunov. Dmitry is an hilarious guy, and I hope to see him back in the tennis conversation, as he's been out for a while with injury. Look at Monfils-Kendrick, as well, and two young guns facing off on Court 13, Nishikori against Korolev.

There's lots of great tennis set to take place over the next fourteen days, and I am absolutely salivating at the prospect of it.

US Open Women's Draw Preview

2010-08-30T01:48:00.002-04:00

The draw is out, the qualifiers have been placed, and everything is set for the tournament proper to begin. Let's take a look at how the draw shook out, shall we?

The first quarter belongs to surprising top seed Caroline Wozniacki, but it will be interesting to see how she fares under the pressure. She reached the final here last year, but hasn't it made it past a grand slam quarterfinal since then. And with Serena Williams' withdrawal, she become the top seed. And she won last week's tournament in New Haven, but had to play some tough matches to do it. Honestly, put together all of those factors with the issue of having a legitimately tough draw, and I don't know how far Sunshine is going to get this fortnight. Her first round is easy enough, against a 20-year old American wildcard, but after that, things get tougher. She could face Carla Suarez Navarro in the second round, and she'll likely get Maria Sharapova in the fourth round. Even if she gets past all that, her quarterfinal opponent is probably going to be either Na Li or Svetlana Kuznetsova. Sveta and Sharapova are the two toughest floaters in the draw, and for them to be in this quarter makes it tricky for Caroline. I honestly see either Sharapova or Kuznetsova getting out of this section, and I give the winner here a very good chance of winning the tournament. Beyond the players I mentioned, you have to watch out for Kimiko Date Krumm (Kuznetsova's first round opponent), Chakvetadze, who made the semifinals here in 2007. Also, Maria Kirilenko has the potential to make some noise, and would be more of a force if she wasn't in such a loaded section of the draw.

The second quarter of the draw has Jelena Jankovic as the top seeded player, and probably the favorite to make it out of this section. Her top competition is Wimbledon finalist Vera Zvonareva, but the Russian has not been showing the best form beyond that one good run. And she has a tough second round against either Lisicki or Coco Vandeweghe. Other than Vera, the other contenders are in that section of the draw, like Aggie Radwanska and Nadia Petrova. I give Yanina Wickmayer an outside shot, but she has some tough competition. This section also has Patty Schnyder, who may be in the twilight of her career, but she still has six grand slam quarterfinals and one semifinal appearance under her belt. Also, keep an eye on the US contingent in this section. In addition to Vandeweghe, you'll find Jamie Hampton, Shelby Rogers, and Bethanie Mattek-Sands. These players often are quiet in other tournaments, but the excitement of the U.S. Open inspires them, and they can pull off victories that are usually beyond their capabilities.

The third quarter has Venus Williams as its top seed, but it has some other tough seeds that she would have to get through, and she hasn't been able to play much lately. Francesca Schiavone may have peaked with her win at the French Open this year, so I don't know how far she'll be able to make it. Victoria Azarenka may be the actual favorite to make it out of this section, actually. The other Italian Flavia Pennetta is here as well, not to mention Israeli Shahar Peer and Indian Sania Mirza. There are two notable young players here as well - Michelle Larcher De Brito, who will make a lot of noise even if she loses in her first round (she's a grunter), and Melanie Oudin, who will probably not be able to live up to her dream run from last year. She has a pretty good first round, but she'll get Alona Bondarenko in the second round, and that's a step up for Melanie. She's had trouble dealing with the expectations all year, and things are only going to be worse here. I expect that the quarterfinal will be Azarenka-Williams, and that should be a good match.

The last quarter is also pretty stacked, with defending champion (and owner of a 14-match winning streak) Kim Clijsters as the second seed. She has - I have to say - a pretty soft draw to get through to the round of 16, where she'll probably face either Marion Bartoli or Ana Ivanovic. Honestly, the opposite eighth of the draw is the one with so many of the tough players. Dementieva, Stosur, Safina, and Kleybonova - that's a tough set of players to be in such a tight space. I see Dementieva beating Safina in the 3rd round, Stosur beating Dementieva in the 4th, and Clijsters beating Stosur in the quarterfinals. It will be interesting to see who gets Kimmy at that stage, but I think she's the surefire favorite to make it through to the semis

For tomorrow's schedule, we get to see if Oudin can open the day on Arthur Ashe stadium, and what sort of form Venus is in. Dinara Safina gets Daniela Hantuchova, but if the former world number one is actually healthy, she can win that match. Although a lot of her collapse was mental last year at this time, it also had a lot to do with injury, which only becomes clear as you look at her retirements in retrospect. Ivanovic plays Makarova, and you can bet that people will be rooting for her almost as much as they'll be rooting for Oudin. Keep an eye on Sania Mirza against Larcher De Brito on court seven, since you'll be able to hear it all around the grounds.

I'll work on my men's draw preview after this - I should get it done just in time for play to start!

New Haven and US Open qualifying wrap-up

2010-08-29T02:49:00.007-04:00

First of all, looking back at the week's tournament in New Haven, I have to say ... it's a pretty disappointing week for a tournament that's in danger of losing its title sponsor. The women's tournament was, uncharacteristically, much more interesting than the men's. Only one of the top eight seeds even made the quarterfinals on the men's side, and Baghdatis fell to Sergiy Stakhovsky, who - to his credit - went on to win the tournament.

Stakhovsky is an odd player. He's won two titles this year, but aside from those two title runs, he's never won more than two matches at one tournament. He's lost in his first match at ten tournaments this year. He's definitely hot and cold. The other players who made deep runs at this tournament are all solid pros, but none of them have any recognition in the U.S. I can assure you that the tournament organizers were not hoping for a Stakhovsky-Istomin final, though it was good tennis.

The women's side had more identifiable players in the last rounds - and Caroline Wozniacki ended up taking the title for a third year in a row, just before she heads to New York as the top seed. She played six sets in the final and semis against two tough Russians, and she may run out of steam at the U.S. Open. She does like to play a lot of matches, but combine the stress of her being the top seed with trying to live up to her final run from last year, and that may be enough to cause the great Dane to waver.

The U.S. Open draws are now out, qualifying is complete and those players have been placed in the draw. I'll look at the men's and women's draws tomorrow, but I'll do a quick analysis of how the quallies went, since I find them more interesting than most, I think.

First of all - I am thriled that Jack Sock, the 17-year old American from the Midwest, was given a wildcard into the main draw. But I really think that may have been better spent being given to Nicolas Mahut - the Frenchman fell in the third round of qualifying against a veteran Brazilian player. Honestly, Mahut would have gotten the tournament a lot more attention, even if he had lost his first match, than another American teen. Sock has the potential to be a great player in the future, but he's probably not going to win a round here. This is a dropped ball by the USTA, as far as I'm concerned.

Also, Ryan Harrison is another American teen who has won a handful of ATP-level matches already. He doesn't have a stellar record, but he's 4-9, which isn't too shabby for an 18-year old. But he didn't get a wildcard, either, and he fought his way through three rounds of qualifying. This may not be his time, but Harrison will be an American star in the next four or five years. I could easily see him making top 50, maybe even top 20. He's a dynamic character, too - reports I've read say that his third match was the most exciting of the qualifying tournament. He gave his shirt to a fan at the end of it. Keep an eye on Harrison.

A couple more players to keep eyes on - Lithuanian player Ricardas Berankis, who just turned 20, made it through qualifying as well. He won the U.S. Open juniors in 2007, so he knows the grounds here. The 2006 Junior champ, Dusan Lojda, also made it through qualifying. A couple more young guns who made it through are Japanese player Kei Nishikori and Canadian Milos Raonic, who I've been a fan of ever since I saw him lose a tight match to Fernando Gonzalez at the Canadian masters event a couple years ago.

There are also some more veteran players who came through qualifying, like Croatian Ivan Dodig, Frenchman Marc Gicquel, American Robbie Kendrick, and South African Rik de Voest. These guys could easily put together a good couple of matches here, and the players who come through qualifying have the advantage of having more familiarity with the court conditions than their early-round opponents, and they usually manage to stage an upset or two.

On the women's side, I'll admit that I'm less familiar with more of the players who made it through quallies, but it's good to see Sania Mirza and Michelle Larcher de Brito get through - they're both fun players. Larcher de Brito in particular is a polarizing figure, one of the loudest grunters you'll ever see on the court.

There are some young players who made it through on the women's side, as well. American Irini Falconi, Canadian Rebecca Marino (there actually were a ton of Canadians getting through quallies), and Aussie Sally Peers. All of them were born in 1990. We're getting to the point where the up-and-coming tennis players were born in the 90's, as the results of this year's qualifying tournaments indicates.

Tomorrow - more in-depth looks at the main draws.

New Haven Round of 16 and US Open Quallies

2010-08-25T01:46:00.004-04:00

Things are a bit tough in New Haven for the US faithful. Donald Young and Taylor Dent both lost today, after winning the first set. Disappointing for both - and James Blake was unable to finish his match, due to rain. So if he wants to progress, he'll need to beat Dolgopolov and Troicki (in all likelihood, as the Serb is on the verge of victory against Nieminen) in one day. That's a tough ask for a player on the comeback trail.

And two of the three American players on the women's side - Melanie Oudin and Varvara Lepchenko - lost in the first round, as well. Only Bethanie Mattek-Sands won her first match, so she's the last American standing on the women's side. And she gets Nadia Petrova next round. Oof.

It's worth noting that the women's draw is much stronger than the men's, despite their tournament being smaller. Four of the top ten players are here - or at least, they were. World number seven Francesca Schiavone is already out, losing in the first round to ... Dinara Safina? Can that be right? Maybe Safina is going to come back; I really hope to see her do well again, because she is a great player to watch when she's not breaking down. I'm surprised to see Wozniacki playing here, since she just won the tournament in Canada last week and has a lot of points to defend from her finals showing at last year's U.S. Open.

Speaking of the U.S. Open, qualifying is just underway, and I'm starting to get excited. I'll give you some of the highlights I can see from the qualifying draw as it's laid out, so far:

Unfortunately for the Japanese fans, two of the four Japanese players in the draw play each other in the first round, Go Soeda and Yuichi Sugita. Tatsumi Ito has already won his first round, but the Japanese player with the most upside (despite being the number two player from his country) is yet to play. Kei Nishikori, who made the fourth round of the Open in 2008, opens against Chilean Paul Capdeville. While Nishikori hasn't had a great year at the top level, he's won three challenger tournament. I'm looking forward to seeing back in the top 100.

The only players I know who have already lost are thirteenth seed from Austria Martin Fischer, and Australian Chris Guccione. Fischer lost to Swiss vet Martin Lammer, while the Gooch lost to Bobby Reynolds. Ivo Minar also lost to Frank Dancevic, but we're early on. A bunch of the other recognizable players are going to be gone before this thing ends.

On that subject, though, there aren't that many former big name guys toiling their way through the quallies, this year. Usually, there's a couple top-30 players whose ages are just about topping 30 as well, who are trying to get their rankings back into more respectable territory. I'm not seeing too many - if any - of those guys, this year. Stefan Koubek may be the only one I can spot.

I do see a bunch of young guns, though. Some teenagers and a bunch of guys in the 20-22 year old range. It's been a while since we've seen a real breakthrough from one of the younger guys on tour, so it's always good to keep an eye out for it on this stage. In addition to Nishikori, watch for Ryan Harrison, Ricardas Berankis, Milos Raonic, Bernard Tomic, Filip Krajinovic, Chase Buchanan, Jerzy Janowicz, and Brydan Klein. None of them over 20 - and that's not counting the wildcards, which all went to US teens (except one, see below), but I'm not expecting too much from those guys. We'll see if a couple of the guys I listed above can make some noise. It's always good to see new faces in the mix - I'm surprised not to see Gianni Mina in the qualifying, but maybe he's playing the juniors tournament again this year.

The other wildcard went to American Blake Strode, who played through the US Open wildcard tournament, just to get this wildcard, where he has to win another three rounds before he even gets into the main draw. Ouch. He doesn't have the best draw, either - it starts off okay, but to get into the Open, he's going to have to beat either top seed Marcel Ilhan (the best Turkish tennis player ever) or Australian hope Bernard Tomic. Tennis is not a forgiving sport by any means. Best of luck to Blake, though.

I'm hoping to see Josselin Ouanna make it through. The tournament definitely needs him, as Tsonga has (I think) withdrawn due to knee problems. Ouanna may not be the genuine article, but he's the next best thing, and he had a good run here last year. He's another player I want to see do well on a more consistent basis. He's lots of fun to watch, when he's on.

I'll admit, I'm disappointed to see Nicolas Mahut in the qualifying draw. The USTA really should have given him a wildcard directly into the tournament, after his accomplishment over the summer. There's no doubt that he did a lot more for tennis's popularity by playing that match than anyone who actually received a wildcard this year. On the plus side, he won't have to play any more marathon matches, thanks to the fifth (or third, in qualifying) set tiebreaker at this major.

My last note is about the American player and frequent tweeter Amer Delic, who is making his return to pro tennis in the USO quallies after a layoff of more than a year. I've been looking forward to seeing him back on the tennis court for a long time, so I hope he has a good run this year. It's got to be tough to come back after so long away, but he has the right attitude. I'm wishing him luck, too.

Cincinnati Wrap-up and New Haven Preview

2010-08-24T02:35:00.003-04:00

Well, the Cincinnati semifinals through the finals were a bit odd, to say the least. The first semifinal on Saturday, between the American duo of Roddick and Fish, was interrupted by rain, and had quite a few sudden changes of momentum. It was tight until 4-5 in the first set, when a rain delay came and stopped play. Once it resumed, Fish's level had dropped significantly. He was broken to lose the set, and then Roddick went up 5-2 in the second. It was at this point that another rain delay came, but this time, once play resumed, it was Roddick who wasn't the same. He was broken while serving for the match and then couldn't find the court in the tiebreak. Fish ran away with the third set.

The second semi wasn't as exciting, as Federer beat Marcos Baghdatis without much difficulty. In the final, the match was tight, no doubt - with only a single break of serve in three sets. Fish won the first set in a tiebreak, but Federer won the second set tiebreak easily. Then he broke to go up 5-4 in the final set, after which he smoothly served it out. The outcome was basically never in doubt, as far as I was concerned. Fish played great tennis, but Federer had such an easy run to the final (while Fish's road was really tough) it would have been almost impossible for Mardy to pull off the upset.

A good title defense for Federer, but on the other hand, if he couldn't win this title, then the alarm bells would have really been sounding. The only top ten player he had to face was Nikolay Davydenko, who he has a dominant record over and who has been on a recent injury layoff. He couldn't have asked for much smoother passage, honestly. I'm sure he'll build some confidence from the win, but one shouldn't really put too much stock in this win, considering the type of opposition he had to fight through. All in all, it was a very strange tournament - pretty good play from most of the people involved, and everybody who made the quarters or so should feel encouraged heading into the U.S. Open.

For those who didn't get as much out of the U.S. Open summer series as they could have hoped, the last stop on the tour is in New Haven, where the field is looking very depleted this year. Although there are now (thanks to Fish's run to the final) four American players in the ATP top 25, none of them are playing in Connecticut. That means that all three of the U.S. players in the draw required wildcards to get there.

Fortunately, Blake, Dent, and Young have all won their opening matches, so there's still a chance that an American could make a deep run. They all get seeds in the next round, though, so it gets tougher from here. Marcos Baghdatis is the top seed in New Haven, and at number 20 in the world, it's not indicative of the best field at the Yale Tennis Center, and he opens against the tough Russian Igor Andreev tomorrow. The best second round matches taking place tomorrow include Fernando Gonzalez against Radek Stepanek, both of whom are coming back from injury layoffs, so they're both going to be shaking off rust. Should be a fun match, nonetheless. Also, keep an eye on Jarkko Nieminen against Viktor Troicki.

It'll be interesting to see who comes through this unusual field, since it doesn't have all the usual suspects that it's had in years past. Here's hoping that Blake can find his form and have a good run - he dominated in his opening round match, beating Pere Riba while only dropping one game. Here's hoping he can keep it together agaisnt Dolgopolov in the second round, not only for his sake, but so the tennis fans will at least have one familiar face to root for. The tournament may be in sponsor trouble already, and losing all the Americans before the quarters would not help their financial situation.

Cincinnati Semifinals

2010-08-21T03:26:00.002-04:00

Wow, another great day of tennis in Cincinnati. One match went exactly as expected, as a fresh Federer tore through Davydenko - while the Russian was able to manufacture a few points of magic, he wasn't strong enough to avoid the inevitable, as Federer finished him off in straight sets. But Davy was not in his best form, and that is exactly what he would have needed to stage the upset, there.

Two of the other matches were nominally upsets, as Mardy Fish beat Andy Murray and Andy Roddick beat Novak Djokovic, but both of them had held winning streaks over their opponents going into today's match, and the world's number 3 and 4 were overtired and not fond of the conditions. So while those results may have been upsets, they shouldn't have come as complete surprises. The Murray-Fish match was a great one - one blowout set sandwiched in between two really tight ones, and Mardy just ended up being a little bit tougher in the end.

But the fourth match was an absolute shocker - Marcos Bagdhatis played as well as I've seen him play since 2007 at least to upset the world number one Rafael Nadal. He served out of his mind and hit some absolutely spectacular shots, while Nadal was just a bit below his best. Down break points at 4-all in the set, Nadal double-faulted. That's something I've never seen him do in a situation like that, and it just goes to show how he doesn't care for these conditions. Credit to Baghdatis for closing it out, though, and even for getting to that point. It was excellent to see.

So our two semifinal match-ups feature Mardy Fish against Andy Roddick and Roger Federer against Marcos Baghdatis. The Fed-Baggy match is a rematch of an Australian Open final, where Baggy had his break-out run several years ago, only to lose to Federer at that stage. You have to favor Federer again here, as Fed has picked up his game this season, but Baghdatis clipped him the last time they played, earlier this year in one of the Spring hardcourt masters events. That may have been an anomaly, though - we'll just have to wait and see.

For the Roddick-Fish match, the situation is surprisingly similar. Roddick owns Fish in their head-to-head, but Fish won their most recent match, in Atlanta just a few weeks ago. Of course, that was while Roddick was suffering from his minor bout with mono, so that was probably a factor. Neither Fish nor Roddick is likely going to be at their absolute best tomorrow, as neither player was at 100% today and they have the early match tomorrow, and Fish had to play a doubles match this evening, which he unfortunately lost 10-8 in the third set super-tiebreaker. The plus side is that whoever wins will have more of a chance to recuperate before the final...

... where they will almost certainly have to play Federer. Fish has beaten Fed in a Masters event like this one, on a hard court, a couple of years ago. And one of Roddick's two wins over Fed came at the Canada Masters in 2003. That said, Federer is still the immense favorite to win this tournament, considering the opposition he has left to fight through. Roddick and Federe haven't played yet this year, and the last Masters final before the U.S. open would be a pretty good place to renew their one-sided rivalry. But who knows? We could get a Baghdatis-Fish final!

Cincinnati Quarterfinals

2010-08-20T00:25:00.003-04:00

The round of 16 was quite a day of tennis. Of the seven matches that were played (Federer got a walkover from Kohlschreiber), every one had a set that went at least to 7-5. Four of the matches went to three sets, and in three of those matches, the ultimate winner of the match lost the first set and had to come back. Nadal saved a match point, Roddick needed something like five or six before he could close the match out, and Murray had to win a third-set tiebreak against Gulbis. Crazy stuff, all around. If Nalbandian hadn't double-faulted on match point against Djokovic, I wouldn't have liked the Serb's chances in a third, in that heat.

The only matches that were pretty straightforward were Mardy Fish over Richard Gasquet and Marcos Baghdatis over Tomas Berdych. That second one is a bit of shock - it's one of Baggy's biggest wins in a long time, against one of the players who was in consideration to take this title. He'll get Nadal in the next round, and Nadal was not at his best against Frenchman Julien Benneteau. The Spaniard had to save a match point in the second set tiebreak, but once he won that tiebreak, the Frenchman absolutely wilted. He started cramping - he just didn't have anything left. Credit to him for playing the match out, and then going on to lose his doubles match in the night session as well, but that's just a brutal day. He played brilliant tennis to get to the finish line. He just couldn't cross it.

Federer, who has played a grand total of 7 games to get the quarterfinals, gets Nikolay Davydenko. The only chance that the Russian has is if Federer is put off by not being on court very much this week. He may have beaten Federer in two of their last three meetings, but he has not been playing at his highest level, whereas Federer just came off a great run last week. Tough to see Davydenko pull off this upset, unless Federer is out of sorts.

Again, the bottom half is more loaded - Mardy Fish gets Andy Murray in the quarters, and Fish has won their last two meetings, as well. Murray may be in great form, but he's also played a lot of tennis, and getting taken to a third-set tiebreak by Gulbis today won't have helped him. Fish had a relatively easy, 69-minute win over Gasquet. I really give Mardy a real shot at pulling off this upset, if he can come up with his best stuff. They're playing in the first singles of the match of the day (for British television, I assume) and that gives Murray the least amount of recovery time he could have gotten. It's a tough set of conditions for the Scot, honestly.

The last quarterfinal match is between Djokovic and Roddick - Djokovic had the smoother passage to this round, but he didn't look that good in the process. He was hurting in the heat, and it looks like they'll be playing tomorrow during the hottest part of the day. Assuming that Roddick can recover from his late start, the conditions definitely favor him. Roddick has won the last three against the Djoker, in conditions similar to these. Roddick will need to play better on the big points than he did against Soderling (2 for 12 on break points? That's bad even for Andy) but he's got a real shot here.

Can you bet that the Cincinnati organizers are praying for a Federer-Nadal and Andy-Andy set of semifinals? That's about as good as they could have hoped. Fish-Roddick wouldn't be as good for the international market, but it might help get people in the U.S. to pay a bit more attention. Really, there aren't any bad match-ups left. If Baghdatis pulls of the upset, a Baggy-Fed semifinal is a grand slam final rematch. If Fish and Djokovic play, that was the Indian Wells final a couple years ago. These are eight excellent tennis players, and I'm just excited to be able to watch them play.

Cincinatti Round of 16

2010-08-19T02:00:00.004-04:00

Through two rounds at the Western & Southern Financial Group Masters, and the tournament is shaping up quite nicely. The top seeds are generally progressing, but the lower seeds haven't fared that great, as several of them got very tough opening draws. Cilic fell on day one to Marcos Baghdatis, and Youzhny fell to Richard Gasquet. Ljubicic dropped to David Nalbandian, and Almagro fell to Stan Wawrinka. But those guys are all former top ten players, so you could have seen those upsets coming. The two bigger surprises today were Ernests Gulbis over Jurgen Melzer (though Gulbis is probably a future top-tenner, in all likelihood) and Mardy Fish over Fernando Verdasco, in two tight tiebreak sets. Other than that, the top players have done well.

The other interesting story has actually been the failure of two of the top American players - Sam Querrey fell pretty tamely against David Ferrer, while John Isner rolled his ankle while playing David Nalbandian, and actually had to retire while leading in the first set. Tough break for Big John, but really a disappointing loss for Querrey. He's dominated at the 250 and 500 tournament level this year, but he has really stumbled at the Masters and Majors. That's got to be the next stage in his career, if he wants to get into the top 15.

Tomorrow, in the round of 16, there are some great match-ups. Marcos Baghdatis plays Tomas Berdych for the right to face Rafael Nadal, who should breeze past Julien Benneteau. Federer plays German Phillipp Kohlschreiber, which should also be a breeze for the former world number one. Rog is 5-0 against the German. They'll be playing to face the winner of Davydenko and Ferrer, which should be a fun match - but neither player will have a chance against Fed in the quarters.

The bottom half of the draw is much more interesting. Any of these eight players have a pretty good chance of making it to the final, while the top half is going to be the winner of the Federer-Nadal semi, in all likelihood. But here, we have Fish against Gasquet, two palyers who are trying to mount comebacks this year, and particularly this season, and a quarterfinal at a Masters event is always a good thing to have under your belt. Gasquet leads the head-to-head 2-0, but they haven't played in two years. That could be a fun match - Gasquet is the better player over all, but Fish has been much better in the past couple months.

They'll be playing for a chance to go after the winner of Andy Murray against Ernests Gulbis, another potential thriller of a match. Gulbis has yet to win against Murray, but they haven't played this year. There's a chance of an upset here, if Gulbis can play his best tennis. And if Murray's a little bit off his game.

The last quarter of the draw is just stacked. Andy Roddick plays Robin Soderling, a match which should be a corker. It's the night match, as well - that's an environment where Roddick thrives. But Soderling has no problem playing the villain. Depending on how tight it is - and if it's a blowout, it'll be a blowout for the Swede - the crowd could play an important role in that match. Roddick needs some match practice before the U.S. Open if he holds any hope of making a run this year, so tomorrow's match is one he needs to win.

Of course, even once he does, he'll be facing either Novak Djokovic or David Nalbandian. Roddick will be hoping that the Djoker doesn't get upset, because he's owned the Serb on hardcourts, especially in day matches. Nalbandian's a bit of tougher story, but this should be a great match-up. Nalbandian's playing like a top guy again, but he's yet to notch a really big win since his come-back began. He beat Robin Soderling, who's number five - but Soderling really stumbled into that ranking. You really have to beat at least one of the big four to really be a contender at these big tournaments.

Lots of storylines tomorrow - it's a bit of a shame that the draw is so bottom-heavy, but it does make for fifty percent of tomorrow's matches to be potentially great viewing. Should be fun!

Rogers Cup Wrap-Up and Cincinnati Preview

2010-08-16T01:56:00.003-04:00

Well, that was a weird final day. Both of the matches which took place today were delayed and interrupted by some problems with rain. In Toronto, during the men's final, the rain delay just kept Federer from really getting into the match. It was a tight affair, but Murray won 7-5, 7-5. Unfortunately, because of the odd conditions in which the match was played, it's tough to tell too much from Murray's victory. He played great, but he got a few breaks that ended up deciding the match. Good win for the Scot, but good for Federer to make it back to number two in the world.

In Cincinnati, the women's final was just as odd. Kim Clijsters was down a set and a break, and was serving to stay in the tournament when a rain delay came along, and she went ahead to break Sharapova while she was serving for the match, then won the second set in a tiebreak. Sharapova was troubled by some kind of injury in the third, but credit Kim for playing through a tough situation. And Maria was magnanimous in defeat - I'm glad to see her back near the top level of the game, because she's such a great personality in addition to being such a great competitor.

The second big men's Masters event takes place next week in Cincinnati, now that the women are off to Canada. I'll take a look at the draw there - this pair of Masters Series tournaments is always a great fortnight during the Summer, something of a U.S. Open preview. Murray just helped his odds in Flushing Meadows this year, but Federer showed he can still play some great tennis to make it to that stage.

Nadal is still the top seed, of course, and one of the eight players to get a bye in the first round. His section of the draw has some tricky players - in fact, his first match could be against Feliciano Lopez, who beat Nadal in Queens. Lopez has to get past Taylor Dent first, but Dent has not been having a great year. After that, Nadal will probably get either Almagro or Wawrinka, who are actually playing each other in the first round. That's going to be a good match, and the winner will get either Llodra or Benneteau - but I'd bet against either Frenchman, no matter who they get. In the quarters, Nadal could have face Cilic, but the Croat was already upset in the first round by Marcos Baghdatis. As a result, it's likely that the Spaniard will get Berdych instead. That should be a fun one.

Even though Federer moved up to number two again this week, the seedings were already determined for this week's tournament, which means that Federer is still the third seed, and could face Nadal in the semifinals. Since Federer is the defending champ here, that's a tough draw - and Federer could slip back to third in the world before the U.S. Open seeds are determined. Lots on the line here. Fed's quarter also has two American wildcards - Robbie Ginepri and James Blake, who could get Fed in the second round. It's tough to see the American pulling off that upset, but he's beaten Roger before. After that, Fed could face Monfils or Kohlschreiber, or his near-conqueror Alejandro Falla. In the quarters, Davydenko is Fed's seeded opponent, but since the Russian has not been playing his best, I see either Querrey or Ferrer making it there. This is actually a good chance for Sam, who has gotten a pretty good draw. He needs a good result at a big tournament like this.

The third quarter is Murray's, but there are a lot of dangerous floaters there. His seeded quarterfinal opponent is Verdasco, but he could have to get by Melzer, Youzhny, Gulbis, Chardy, Gasquet, Fish, or Simon instead. This quarter has the most firecracker opening rounds - Fish against Simon, Gasquet against Youzhny, and Gulbis against U.S. wildcard Donald Young. Lots of fun, streaky players here, so any number of them have the chance to get on a run through to the semifinals.

The final quarter has Novak Djokovic, Robin Soderling, and recently mono-suffering Andy Roddick, who has dropped to the ninth seed, so he has to open in the first round against Sergiy Stakhovsky. Lleyton Hewitt opens against Yen-Hsun Lu for the chance to face Soderling, while David Nalbandian gets Ivan Ljubicic. And Djokovic's first opponent will be either Radek Stepanek or Viktor Troicki. And John Isner is in this section, too. These bottom two quarters are pretty much loaded, honestly. And it's tough to know who's going to get through. There are plenty of great match-ups, though. I'm excited for another week of Masters Series tennis.

Rogers Cup Final

2010-08-15T04:59:00.002-04:00

The two semifinal matches today were both very interesting, but for different reasons. The Murray-Nadal match was not really much of a contest, as Murray played absolutely lights-out tennis in order to keep Nadal stifled from the very first ball. He played the way he played in Australia, rather than the way he played at Wimbledon. It was the best performance I've seen from Murray in a long time, and it was Nadal's first significant loss essentially since the clay season started.

On the other hand, Federer started out just as dominant - if not more so - against Djokovic, only to falter after he got up a set and a break. Djokovic won five of six games straight, then broke again to take the set, 6-3. The third set was a tight affair, with Djokovic having chances to break and serve for the match. But Federer held on, and the Serb finally wilted when he was trying to serve his way into a deciding tiebreak.

It was a mish-mash from both players, with neither one showing very much consistency at all. But when they were both on, it looked like a match two of the best players in the world, there was no question about that. But both guys were also making really strange unforced errors, as well. An exciting match, even the tennis may not have been of the highest caliber.

It should be fascinating to see how Federer and Murray match up tomorrow - Murray may lead the head to head, but Federer has won their last three meetings, and he could get back to even with a win tomorrow. Fed hasn't won a title since the Aussie Open, whereas Murray hasn't won one since last year. There is an enormous amount on the line for both guys - as far as rankings are concerned, Federer will bump back up to number two next week no matter what, but I think that Murray is in danger of dropping back down to number five, if you can believe that. This is a massive match for both of these guys' hard-court seasons, and for their rivalry.

If Murray plays the way he did against Nadal, and Federer plays the way he did against Djokovic, I give Murray the edge. He was more consistently the better player. It will be fun to see what happens, no matter what the result.

Rogers Cup Semifinals

2010-08-14T01:47:00.002-04:00

Well, you can't really ask for a better semifinal line-up than this one. While last year's quarterfinals were star-studded, with the world's top eight players making it to that stage, last year there were three out of four upsets - only Andy Murray made it to the semifinals out of the top four, and he went on to win the tournament. This year, the semifinal round is stacked with the big four, the four players who have dominated tennis for the last two years, and it should be fun.

Murray and Djokovic both had relatively easy times with their quarterfinal matches - the Scot's performance was probably the more impressive, because he was facing a tougher opponent in David Nalbandian, but he was effective from the very first ball, and Nalbandian was never really in the match. Djokovic had a relatively low-tier foe in Frenchman Jeremy Chardy, but he was up to the challenge.

On the other hand, Nadal strugged early on against an inspired Phillipp Kohlschreiber, but was able to gut out a win in three. Federer started better against Tomas Berdych, then seemed to slow down and very nearly lost the match. Berdych was up 5-2 in the third set, but his one-break lead evaporated and Federer pulled out the win in the tiebreak. This would have been a devastating loss for Fed, so you know he'll be inspired by this win.

Nadal meets Murray for the third time this year, and they split their previous two meetings. Murray won in Australia but Nadal won at Wimbledon. This match will hinge entirely on how Murray plays - if he's aggressive enough, he can beat Nadal, but if he sits back and lets Nadal dictate, then he's going to be out. Nadal will beat him every time if he tries to counterpunch. It should be an interesting match, though - Nadal is on an unbelievable tear this season, with only a single loss since April, at Queen's Club. On the other hand, Murray hasn't won a tournament yet this year. Two players with very divergent years, thus far. There's a lot on the line for both of them.

The other match is no less interesting, as Federer and Djokovic have meet more than a dozen times. Federer has the lead in the head to head, but Djokovic won their most recent match, which took place at the end of 2009. Neither player is having a great season recently, so whoever comes out on top is going to take a lot of confidence from their win. I think Federer has better form coming in, and he has to be energized by that win over Berdych. But Djokovic is the number two player in the world, stunningly, and he's - by the numbers - been the better player over the past year.

I still think a Federer-Nadal final is fairly likely, but none of the possible permutations that we could see come Sunday would be a complete shock, with four players of this caliber remaining in the tournament. Like I said before, it would be tough to ask for a more exciting line-up at this point.

Rogers Cup Quarterfinals

2010-08-13T01:58:00.002-04:00

We're through to the quarterfinals in Canada, and - for the most part - things have been going as expected. The top four seeds are all alive and well, though the same can't be said for the other seeds in the draw. Other than the big four, only one of the remaining 12 seeds made it to this stage. Remember that last year, this was the tournament were all eight of the top seeds made it to this stage. At this point, the top four are still in action, but Juan Martin Del Potro is out of action, injured, Nikolay Davydenko lost earlier today to Jeremy Chardy - the Russian clearly still not back to form after his wrist injury earlier this year - and Andy Roddick and J.W. Tsonga both declined to play the tournament, due to injury/exhaustion. The message to take from this is that the top four are in that place for many reasons, but one of the main ones is their consistency and their ability to stay healthy.

The only other seed to make it to the quarterfinals here is Tomas Berdych, who is now ranked inside the top 8. He's going to face Roger Federer, while he's riding a two-match win streak against the world number 3. (It's still weird to see that) But before Berdych beat Federer at Wimbledon and in Miami, he was riding an eight-match losing streak. It will be interesting to see how this match goes, because Berdych has been quiet since losing in the Wimbledon final - but so has Federer. I'm sure that Roger is eager to avenge his last two losses and show that he's back to his top form. This has the potential to be tomorrow's best match, for sure.

The other match in the running before that is between defending champion Andy Murray and the comeback kid David Nalbandian, who has ousted Ferrer and Soderling already this week. He's riding an 11-match winning streak, and it will be interesting to see how Murray handles him. The Scot has yet to win a title this year, and only reached two finals. His top-four ranking is in jeopardy, if he loses too many points this week. And Nalbandian is the sort of player who can beat Murray - crisp hitting enough to blunt Murray's returning. This match might be able to best Federer-Berdych, depending on whether Nalbandian's run can continue.

The other two matches are less exciting - Nadal gets Phillip Kohlschreiber, who he's 6-0 against. The German gutted out a tough win against Yen-Hsun Lu, but just because he managed to serve up a bagel against the best player from Chinese Taipei, that doesn't mean he can do much against the best player in the world. Novak Djokovic may have a slightly tougher time with Jeremy Chardy, who has been playing very well this week, no question. But he got a hobbled Davydenko after he just barely eked past Fernando Verdasco, and got a tired Marcos Bagdhatis in the first round. I expect Nadal and Djokovic to get through to the semis - it would be a huge upset any other way, but Murray and Federer are more of a toss-up.

Some good tennis on offer tomorrow, but the lack of U.S. players in the second big swing of the U.S. hardcourt circuit is a bit of a downer. Only two of them were even in the draw - and they played each other in the first round. Querrey beat Russell, but then fell to Kevin Anderson in the next round. We had no Blake, Fish, Isner, Roddick, Ginepri... nothing. At least in Cincinnati, I can bet that somebody like Ryan Harrison will get a wildcard. Hopefully the American men will have a better showing next week, so that we can stop wringing our hands about the state of American tennis.

Washington Wrap-Up and Toronto Masters Preview

2010-08-09T01:37:00.004-04:00

The week in Washington was absolutely crazy. Not only did every American get dumped by the quarterfinals, but David Nalbandian, who looked like his career was on its last legs this time last year, tore through some tough opposition to take only his 11th title. For a player who's been on tour as long as he has, and who has as much talent, that number is woefully low. A huge win for Nalbandian over Baghdatis in the final, and this brings the Argentine back into the conversation. He played stellar tennis all week long, bringing out his best when he really needed it, and absolutely playing like the world-beater he once was. The question will be how well he can maintain that form, because if he can, he's going to be a dark horse in almost any tournament he enters.

The other big story of the week was how wayward Svetlana Kuznetsova pulled her game together long enough to win her first title of the year. She played some solid tennis herself - hopefully, this is the start of things shifting around a bit for the Russian.

Looking ahead, next week's Rogers Cup in Toronto is the first big tournament since Wimbledon. All of the non-injured top ten players are in action again, when we haven't too seen much of them lately. When your 16th seed is ranked #20 in the world, you know your draw is pretty stacked. It will be interesting to see how the top players perform, now that the hard court season is starting in earnest. One year ago, this was the tournament where the top eight seeds made it to the finals for the first time - this year, another historic milestone is happening this week. Roddick drops out of the top ten and that leaves no U.S. player in the top ten for the first time in history. Ouch. Since Roddick made it to the semifinals here last year, it's going to be tough to not lose points this week.

Roddick is in the top quarter of the draw, with top seed Rafael Nadal. His little section is also absolutely stacked with players who have beaten Roddick in tough matches. His first opponent could be Yen-Hsun Lu, who beat him at Wimbledon. Tipsarevic is also in this group, who beat him at Wimbledon two years ago and has been playing well. His first seeded player to meet is Cilic, who beat him at the Aussie Open, and he could also get Kohlschreiber, who beat him at the Aussie Open a couple years ago. Even Viktor Troicki beat Roddick during the summer swing two years ago. And then, if he makes it through that minefield, he'll probably get Rafael Nadal or - slightly less likely - Sam Querrey, who beat him earlier this year. Tough draw for the American; he could be on the verge of falling out of the top fifteen next week.

The next quarter of the draw is Andy Murray's, but his form has not been spectacular, either. He could face a red-hot Xavier Malisse in his first match, which could be a challenge. After that, perhaps Gael Monfils, or question mark Fernando Gonzalez, who has not played since the early Spring, and who opens against the Frenchman. Murray's potential quarterfinal opponent could be Soderling, Ferrer, Nalbandian, or Gulbis - that is a pretty stacked section of the draw as well. Gulbis-Bellucci is one of the most interesting first-round match-ups on offer, as we might see if Ernests has healed at all since his early withdrawal in Washington.

The draw's third quarter belongs to - bizarrely enough - Roger Federer, playing in his first tournament as the number three seed since... since before I started paying attention to tennis as a sport, honestly. His section of the draw is relatively cushy, in comparison to the top half, so hopefully his time off and his new coaching relationship will see him through to at least the quarters. Alejandro Falla, Federer's almost-conqueror at Wimbledon and potential first match for Fed here, has to be disappointed to see that. Almagro's is Fed's potential opponent once the seeds start to meet, and he is playing some of his best tennis of late, but it's tough to see him pulling off that upset. Federer will then get either Berdych (pretty likely) or Youzhny, or perhaps one of the two erstwhile Frenchmen, Gasquet or Simon. Simon-Youzhny is another of the really good opening rounds, but all the same - not a lot of firepower that's likely to knock Federer off his place, here.

The fourth quarter has second-seeded Novak Djokovic and Nikolday Davydenko, as well as Jurgen Melzer and Fernando Verdasco. Washington finalist Marcos Baghdatis is here, as well as Radek Stepanek. Two of the four Canadian wildcards ended up in this quarter, which is honestly good for the other players, but keep an eye Raonic-Hanescu in the first round. Raonic played a great match here last year, and has a lot of potential as one of the more visible teens on the tour. He just made a challenger final as well, losing to 102-ranked Tobias Kamke.

This is an interesting draw, as it appears to be really top-heavy, but with 16 of the top 20 players in action and only 56 players in action at all, there aren't that many places to hide. I'm excited to see how things play out.

Washington Final

2010-08-08T01:46:00.003-04:00

Well, while I've been busy with other things, the Legg Mason tennis tournament has gone absolutely bonkers. The final, set for tomorrow, is between wildcard David Nalbandian and eighth-seeded Marcos Baghdatis. If you had them picked to play for the title a week ago, then you deserve a prize.

Nalbandian's performance has been absolutely spectacular - he has been in dominant form through most of his matches, losing only a single set to Gilles Simon, who was playing his best tennis in years. Every other set he's played, he's won, and also were never closer than 6-4. It's been brutal - and this is how well the Argentine can play, he just hasn't done it for a few years. It's good to see him back, though.

This has just been a weird tournament, after a day of tennis was almost canceled due to rain, they stuffed a bunch of matches in all at once, and it was a brutal day for Americans. Every American left lost in the round of 16, some pretty badly. Roddick's performance was extremely lackluster, and his reward for not being into it is dropping out of the top ten. This is bad news for Andy, who looked to be having a great year around March, but then he took a long clay-court layoff, got sick, and hasn't been the same player since. If he doesn't put up two good performances at the two upcoming Masters series events, he's going to be seeded outside the top eight, and could potentially hit a top four seed in the fourth round.

It's also worth noting that with Roddick dropping to (a projected) number 12, there are suddenly no Americans in the top ten for the first time since the ranking system began. An odd thing to happen at the same time that we were talking about an American renaissance - but it is worth looking at further, just not right now.

Nalbandian's opponent will be another recent underachiever, Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis, who started the year winning a title and then hasn't gone on to do much since. He was fairly lucky to get a tired Xavier Malisse in the semis instead of a fussy and uppity Tomas Berdych, who doesn't plan on coming back to the tournament next year, because of their unusual scheduling decisions and his feeling that he wasn't being treated well as the top seed. Baghdatis also may have rolled his ankle in the semis, which won't help him in the final.

Really, the final is probably going to be a cakewalk for Nalbandian, who had the tougher road, and was playing better tennis along the way. Baghdatis had a really nice win over Verdasco, but other than that, the quality of his opposition wasn't as much to write home about. Unless Nalbandian is exhausted or forgets how to play so well, I don't see Baghdatis posing a lot of a threat. It's good to see two interesting characters (who I pegged for big things this year on their respective comeback trails) in the final of the Legg Mason tournament.

Washington Round of 16

2010-08-05T19:41:00.002-04:00

The only reason I'm able to write about this round at the Legg Mason tennis championships is that a rain delay has prevented any action from taking place today, so we're in the same state we were in yesterday. I've been busy this week, so I'm glad for the chance to catch up.

Yesterday's action was fast and furious, and it was an absolute seed massacre. Five out of eight seeds dropped in Wednesday's action, two to retirements. Lleyton Hewitt couldn't finish his match against Alejandro Falla, and Ernests Gulbis called it quits against Ilya Marchenko. Stepanek, who was playing his first tournament back from injury, clearly wasn't at his best against Marco Chiudinelli. And Sam Querrey was almost certainly tired when he lost to Janko Tipsarevic this time around. On the other hand, I expect that Stan Wawrinka just got blasted off the court by Wildcard David Nalbandian, who has not played many tournaments this year, but has been the absolute boss at Davis Cup.

Berdych was nearly another casualty against Dmitry Tursunov, but he ran away with the third set. And recent first-time titlist Andrey Golubev had the easiest win for a seed against Kristof Vliegen. Marcos Baghdatis needed two tiebreaks to get through Horacio Zeballos, but he managed to pull through.

Seeds had done better on Tuesday, with only the Frenchman Benneteau and Llodra losing - the former to Xavier Malisse, and the latter to American qualifier Ryan Sweeting, who built on his win over James Blake in the first round. Fernando Verdasco saved a match point against German Michael Berrer, but he managed to win the match in a third-set tiebreak. As a result, we have some interesting match-ups waiting in the winds, whenever the rain decides to stop.

Berdych will play Golubev - this will be one of the first tests to see if Golubev, who played like a top-10 player to win the tournament in Hamburg, was just having a flukey week, or if he is ready to raise his game on a week-in, week-out basis. It'll be tough to get past Berdych, though. They're playing for the chance to face the winner of John Isner and Xavier Malisse, another tough match. Malisse is a tough customer who has been playing well, lately, but Isner has been tough to beat on hard courts this season. They played once already this year, with Malisse winning in three tiebreaks, but that was on clay. I like Isner in that one, but it should be tight.

Verdasco plays Sweeting, and this is another tricky match for Verdasco - Sweeting is a young American who has been playing well lately, and Hot Sauce was not at his best against Berrer. I have to expect Verdasco to come out in better form, but there's a chance of an upset here. Baghdatis has one of the easiest matches, against Marchenko, who advanced thanks to Gulbis's injury. I expect Baggy in the round of 16.

Tipsarevic gets Alejandro Falla as a reward for besting Sam Querrey, and Tipsy has just been playing too well the past ten days, I don't see Falla winning this one, unless Janko falls apart. They'll be playing for the chance to get the winner of one of the round's best matches: Mardy Fish, on an 11-match winning streak, plays Croatian Marin Cilic. I really don't know who to call this one for. Mardy has been playing like a completely different player this summer.

The last quarter has Nalbandian getting Marco Chiudinelli, which should be a breeze for the Argentine. Chiudinelli is just a different class of player - the winner will get either Andy Roddick or Gilles Simon. Roddick is 2-0 against the Frenchman, and Simon has not been at his best of late, but he has done well on this surface and in this situation, so it could be a tough match. And things only get better from there. It'll be interesting to see if they have to play double-duty tomorrow - in which case, the spectators are really going to be getting their money's worth.

Week 30 Wrap-up and Week 31 Preview

2010-08-02T01:48:00.003-04:00

Well, three out of the four finals today actually turned out to be a bit of a let-down. Three straight set victories, in which the losing player was basically never in the match. I'll get to the thriller last.

Unfortunately, Richard Gasquet seemed to have some sort of an injury - I was watching a video feed with no commentator, so I'm not sure exactly what it was, but it was clear that Gasquet was not serving as well as he had been up to this point in the tournament. The Frenchman had been serving at about 55% and winning 70% of his first serve points up to now. In the final, though, those numbers were almost reversed - Gasquet served at 80% first serves and only won 56% of those points. Honestly, that's a sign of an injury - you don't suddenly start serving that weakly out of strategy. It's a shame, because there were some very good points, but Gasquet just couldn't keep up the level of play he needed.

In Umag, Ferrero was just too strong for his Italian opponent. Starace never had a break point against the former world number one. Ferrero only had one in each set, but that was all he needed. It was a good match, but not an exciting one.

The more star-studded of the women's final was something of a surprise - Victoria Azarenka won her first title since April last year, beating Sharapova thoroughly. The match would have been tighter, but I think Sharapova suffered from her late three-setter last night against Radwanska, and her three-setter the night before against Dementieva. She was tired, she hadn't played during the day, and she was facing an invigorated opponent. There were some stunning points, particularly in the first set, but not a lot of great serving - there were five breaks in the first set. Their games are similar, but the intangibles were with the Belarussian today. On another day, Sharapova could have easily taken the match.

The most exciting final today was definitely in Los Angeles - Sam Querrey lost the first set in a dispiriting fashion, double-faulting on break and set point after having held a one-break lead earlier in the set. He could have easily gone away, playing a higher-ranked, more experienced player who he had never even managed a single set against in four previous meetings. But Sam had already escaped defeat in his previous two matches, so he was playing with house money. Querrey upped his level of play significantly, smacking unbelievable winners that even Murray couldn't run down consistently. He didn't get frustrated by everything that the Scot was getting back, and he played well within himself.

That almost wasn't enough. Murray had another break and set point in the second set, but Querrey saved that, then ran away with the tiebreak. He really outplayed the world number four at that stage of the match, and he took the momentum and ran away with it. He kept his cool and went up a break in the third, served supremely well, and closed out the match. This is huge win for Querrey, who does not have a great record against the players at the top tier of the game. It may not have been on the biggest stage, but this was an excellent win. On the other hand, this is a bad sign for Andy Murray, who has still not won a title this year. He's losing almost 1400 points this month from his strong performances at last year's Summer hard court Masters events. He's not playing at that form this year, and he could drop out of the top four for the first time in a long while. I don't know if he's still hungover from that Aussie Open loss in the final or what, but we haven't seen classic Andy Murray since that tournament in 2010.

Looking ahead, after a week of so many tournaments taking place, it will be nice to be able to focus on one bigger event: the Legg Mason tennis championships in Washington, D.C. This will be an interesting event, because more of the top players are starting to come out of the post-Wimbledon woodwork, and the second European clay court season is finally over, so those players are crossing the Atlantic and joining the pre-U.S. Open party.

The top seed in Washington is Tomas Berdych, who hasn't played since the Wimbledon final. Considering his lack of match play, can't really be considered the favorite here, especially not with such a strong field. While two-time defending champ Juan Martin Del Potro can't defend his title, Andy Roddick is here, who won in 2007, when he beat John Isner. This was Isner's break-out tournament, and see how far he's come since then.

Sam Querrey is also here, and if he's not jaded after playing four three-set matches in as many days last week, can have a strong week. Mardy Fish is also back, after taking last week off, still riding a ten match winning streak. And while James Blake may have been unable to get over the hump against Feliciano Lopez last week, he still played as well as he has since January. That's a lot of strong Americans in the field.

And in addition to the home-town boys, Verdasco and Cilic are also in action, as are Baghdatis and Gulbis. Former champions Lleyton Hewitt and Arnaud Clement are also here. Radek Stepanek is getting back into action, after a long injury layoff, and the surprise winner in Hamburg, Andrey Golubev, is the 16th seed. Two wildcards also went to David Nalbandian and Richard Gasquet. And one of my favorite up-and-coming players, Kei Nishikori, made it through qualifying. Plenty of space for fireworks this week.

The best opening-round matches are between last week's almost semifinalist Janko Tipsarevic and Arnaud Clement, a former champion here. And they're playing for the privilege of getting Sam Querrey in the second round! Also look for James Blake against U.S. qualifier Ryan Sweeting, who has a good career ahead of him. Dmitry Tursonov, who has been having a really rough year, plays Roddick's conqueror at the French Open, Teymuraz Gabashvili. David Nalbandian plays Rajeev Ram, and Yen-Hsun Lu (Roddick's conqueror at Wimbledon) plays Alejandro Falla. Those are some pretty good first-rounds.

I have a busy week ahead of me, with some travel, so I won't be able to focus on the tennis as much as I would like, which is a shame. But I'll try to catch and write about what I can.

Week 30 Finals

2010-08-01T03:10:00.002-04:00

There was a lot of interesting action today. The semifinals definitely lived up to their billing, in almost all of the tournaments taking place today. At least one match at each event went three sets, and only the women's tournament in Stanford didn't feature a tiebreak. It's always nice when things fall in such a way that these later stages of a tournament are as exciting as they really ought to be.

In Umag, two Italians had a chance at making it to the final, but only one of them was up to the task. Juan Ignacio Chela apparently was unable to follow up the win over Nikolay Davydenko, and he fell to Potito Starace. Andreas Seppi couldn't muster his compatriots form, and he was essentially blitzed by an on-fire Juan Carlos Ferrero in the other semi. I expect that Ferrero will be too strong for Starace tomorrow. This is probably the least exciting final going on tomorrow, in my estimation, but as it is a meeting between two very talented and accomplished clay-courters. Unfortunately, Ferrero has a 5-1 record against the Italian, and is the prohibitive favorite to win the match.

The other clay-court final taking place tomorrow is between Richard Gasquet and Nicolas Almagro, and this may just be the match on offer. They've played once already this year, where Almagro won 9-7 in a third set tiebreak. That's a tough standard to live up to, but the match has the potential to be a barn-burner. Gasquet has more talent than his Spanish opponent, but he hasn't been playing as well this past year - Almagro is nearing his career high ranking, while Gasquet, is well outside the realm of being seeded for the U.S. Open. Since he peaked in the top ten, that's quite a drop. Gasquet has the touch, but Almagro has the power. This will really depend on who is on tomorrow - if Gasquet can make the tough shots that he likes to go for, then he has to be the favorite. If Almagro can hit through the ball the way he likes to and still find the court, it will be tough for Gasquet to do anything. If they're both on, then it will be a lot of fun. Here's hoping for a good match, in this one.

Strangely enough, Los Angeles is the only place where the top seed made it to the final. Even though a Murray-Querrey match-up looks like a walk in the park for the Brit, it may not be. Both players have seen significant lapses in their levels of play during their last few matches, with Querrey on the brink of elimination in both his semi and quarterfinal matches. He even saved a match point today against Tipsarevic. Querrey has yet to beat his opponent in tomorrow's final, losing all four of their previous matches. But their match at this year's Wimbledon was closer than the scoreline indicates. It's also interesting to note their difference in form this year - since reaching the Aussie Open final, Murray hadn't even made another final until this week, while Sam Querrey has won three titles this year on three different surfaces. If Sam manages to win this match, it will be a big indication that he's ready to rise to the next step and really challenge the game's top players. Really, everyone expects Murray to win this match - last year in the final, Sam barely squeaked by against Carsten Ball. His opposition this year is significantly tougher. Murray will hopefully be encouraged if he can finally get over the hump and win his first title of the year - if he doesn't win, then it could be an indication of some trouble ahead, for his position in the top five.

It's also worth noting that the women's semifinals today were both excellent, with Victoria Azarenka demolishing Sam Stosur (and on her 21st birthday, no less!) while Maria Sharapova followed up a big win over Elena Dementieva in the quarters to beat third-seeded Aggie Radwanska, despite a sluggish start. By the end of it, Sharapova was brutally slugging the ball from all over the court, and there wasn't much for Radwanska to do. Both matches were very high quality affairs, and tomorrow's final could be a thriller. Sharapova leads their head to head 2-1, but Azarenka put on the stronger performance in her semifinal.

Basically, if you're a tennis fan, there's a lot to be excited about tomorrow. And this is with the majority of the game's top players out of action for a while, yet! Imagine how things will be going once we get into the more intense parts of the U.S. Open warm-ups.

Week 30 Semifinals

2010-07-31T01:02:00.003-04:00

Some big surprises in the quartefinals, today. Two out of three top seeds went down rather tamely, and there were a handful of other upsets as well.

I'll start in Umag, where they had to play eight matches today, after yesterday's rain. Ljubicic managed to beat Ivan Dodig in three sets, but then he didn't have anything left in his tank for Potito Staracce. He almost eked out the second set tiebreak - I believe that he had three set points before he lost the last five in a row to drop the tiebreak 8-6. Jurgen Melzer also seemed to run out of steam, after he beat Jan Hajek while dropping just a single game, he only managed to win five in his second match against Andreas Seppi. All in all, a good day for Italians!

Nikolay Davydenko's loss was a bit tougher for me to understand. He had a day of rest, and his first match against Stephane Robert was easy. But he was never in the match against Juan Ignacio Chela. Chela is a great player, no doubt, and for some reason he has Davydenko's number. The Argentine is now 6-1 against the world number six. Ferrero was the only favorite player who made it through cleanly, and I see him getting through to the final.

Gstaad only had one real upset, but it was a doozy - top seeded Russian Mikhail Youzhny lost to 31-year old Kazakh qualifier Yuri Schukin, who has an 11-20 ATP record in the 11 years he's been a pro. Surely this is his biggest scalp, and quite a shock that Youzhny dropped that match. His road only gets tougher, facing Richard Gasquet in the next round, and then - in all likelihood - Nicolas Almagro in the final. I'd really expect Almagro and Gasquet to meet at that stage, which would be quite an exciting match-up.

In Los Angeles, the only technical upset was Janko Tipsarevic over Marcos Baghdatis, but that was always going to be a close match. Rainier Schuettler nearly managed to beat Sam Querrey, and by all rights should have, but the defending champ just barely managed to eke out a victory - the match ended with four consecutive breaks of serve, and two of those were Querrey breaking the German as he served for the match. It was a high-quality match from the counterpunching veteran, who is one of the oldest players in the top hundred. It's got to be brutal to lose a close match like that, at this stage of his career. But kudos to Sam for finding a way to get through.

Andy Murray had a tight first set against Alejandro Falla, but then cruised through the second after winning the tiebreak. The match between James Blake and Feliciano Lopez was a lot tighter, and James barely ended up losing the match, but it was very, very tight. I hope he'll be encouraged by his performance, which was his strongest showing since he came back from his injury. He would have felt a lot better if he won that match, but Lopez is a tough customer with a big lefty serve. No shame for a somewhat rusty Blake to come off (just barely) second best in that one.

I expect Murray and Querrey to get through to the finals, but if Tipsarevic finishes what Schuettler couldn't, it should be interesting. "Tipsy" beat Murray earlier this year in Dubai, but he has never won a title. He also just got married, which may have given him the grounding he needed to make a breakthrough. We'll see!

Week 30 Quarterfinals

2010-07-30T02:20:00.003-04:00

We're through to the quarterfinals, with another three ATP 250 tournaments moving right along. Well, we're almost through to the quarterfinals - in Umag, the rain kept all action off the courts today, so they've got a few matches to get through before the quarterfinals. But that just means more action tomorrow, so we can catch up!

In Gstaad, three out of four seeds remain in the top half of the draw, and only one of four in the bottom half. It's interesting - top seed Mikhail Youzhny should breeze through 31-year old Kazakh qualifier Yuri Schukin, while the match-up between Gasquet and Montanes is one of the most interesting matches on offer tomorrow. I see Gasquet getting through that one, and a Youzhny-Gasquet semi would be an excellent clash. In the bottom half, there are three huge-hitting players (Almagro, Chardy, and Andreev) plus Gimeno-Traver. I would bet on Almagro and Andreev getting through those matches to the semis. It's worth noting that Andreev's match in the round of 16 against Marco Chiudinelli was one of the best matches of the tournament, with two tiebreak sets necessary for the Russian to get through.

In Los Angeles, the most interesting story so far was the absolute implosion of Ernests Gulbis. He was dominating Alejandro Falla, up a set and with multiple break point chances in the second, before he just imploded, lost a point due to racket abuse, and then lost the set. He was up an early break in the third before beginning to self-destruct again. Falla actually served for the match, only to get broken. But in the tiebreak, Gulbis fell apart again - eventually losing the match 10-8. He is definitely beginning to remind me of Safin, in his temperament and skill. This was his first tournament back after a layoff, so one might expect a bit of rust. Gulbis was not too down on himself in his post-match interview, and I expect he'll be back for the rest of the U.S. Open series.

Beyond that, it's also good to see James Blake and Andy Murray in action - and they're one round away from a semifinal meeting which could be a lot of fun to watch. Before that, Murray will have to beat Falla (which I expect should be no problem) and Blake will have to get through Feliciano Lopez. That's the toughest match he's had since coming back from injury, but it's winnable, the way he's playing so far. In the bottom half of the draw, two underachieving but very talented and fun players are meeting in the first quarter - Janko Tipsarevic and Marcos Baghdatis, which is something of a pick-em, since neither one has been playing particularly well lately, and Sam Querrey meets Rainer Schuettler. They've already played twice this year, with Schuettler winning at the Aussie Open, while Querrey won in Queens, where he went on to win the tournament. Querrey didn't start great against Kevin Anderson in his last match, but he finished off in supremely good form, winning the third set to love. I like him against the German vet.

It's tough to know what's going to happen in Umag, since half of the players in action tomorrow will have to play two matches in one day to get to the semis. Normally, I'd favor Melzer and Ljubicic, but the Croat may not be be able to recover as quickly as he would like, and Melzer has played so much tennis lately, he must be jaded. Also, the Umag draw did an interesting thing where they played two matches each from the top and bottom of the draw on the two days of the second round, which puts the other pair at a disadvantage when there's a rain delay like this. Whoever wins between Davydenko-Chela and Ferrero-Dolgopolov (I like the first player in each case) will be much fresher for the semis. Don't be shocked to see a Davydenko Ferrero final come Sunday.

Week 29 Finals and Week 30 Preview

2010-07-26T02:50:00.004-04:00

Really interesting finals this week. Melzer made his first final of the season (in singles) and as the last seeded player, up against a second-time finalist Andrey Golubev whose ranking was south of 80th in the world. Melzer was the big favorite, but Golubev followed up an astounding week by blowing the French open semifinalist off the court. This week has been a revelation for the Kazakh player - it's amazing to me that he's had such an unremarkable career up to this point. He's on my list of players to watch - if he can play like this, he'll be in the top 20 in no time.

In Atlanta, Mardy Fish continues his stunning run. He's now won two tournaments in a row for the first time in his career - that's a ten match winning streak for Mardy. John Isner played a tough match, but he just ran out of gas. Conditions did not favor the tall American, who had played all of his matches in the heat of the day, and he couldn't quite close the deal, though he did get Fish to a third-set tiebreak. A really strong performance by both players. Fish is headed back to the top of the game, as well. It'll be fascinating to see how he does in this year's U.S. Open series.

Looking ahead to this week's tournaments, there are two more clay-court events in Europe, and one more hard-court even in America. These are almost the last clay-court tournaments this season, with one lone exception in September. So all of the clay-court specialists are trying to get some action in - in Gstaad, we've got Richard Gasquet back in action, as well as Youzhny, Almagro, Bellucci, and Montanes. Unseeded players to watch are Andreev, Nieminen, and last week's titlist Andrey Golubev.

In Umag, Davydenko is the top seed, but he's still trying to get back on track after his injury lay-off. Ferrero and Melzer are here as well, but all in all, the Croatian tournament has a weaker field than in Switzerland. Olivier Rochus opens against Philipp Petzschner, which is one of the more interesting match-ups, but I think this tournament may not heat up until the third round or so.

The third and final tournament taking place this week was going to feature Novak Djokovic, but he pulled out - somewhat mysteriously. Fortunately for the tournament, Andy Murray took a wildcard, so that should be interesting. Murray hasn't won a title yet this year, and that's saying something. He hasn't even made a final since the Australian Open. Ernests Gulbis is back from his layoff this week as well, and he could be Murray's third round opponent, if he gets past Teimuraz Gabashvili in the second round. The second quarter of the draw has Mardy Fish, who has been playing great, but he has to run out of gas eventually. He may have to get past Feliciano Lopez, or perhaps James Blake, if he can finally put a few matches together. Sam Querrey and Marcos Baghdatis are also in action in the bottom half of the draw. The winner of the U.S. Open series gets extra bonus money at the U.S. Open, so these tournaments can be important.

Week 29 Finals

2010-07-25T03:42:00.002-04:00

The two finals taking place tomorrow are both looking like good matches, and I got three out of the four competitors correct. Golubev and Melzer face off in Hamburg - it's Golubev's second final of his career, and Melzer is the only player who can fight off whatever bad juju was bringing down the seeds throughout the week. Despite his recent run of excellent form, the veteran Melzer only has two titles to his name. He's made eight finals, so that's not exactly an encouraging record. This should be an interesting match, because if Golubev can feel his racket on the ball and finds a way to hit through Melzer, he may just come off with a victory. Of course, Golubev has just come out of nowhere in this tournament, while Melzer has been playing great lately. In a pressure situation, Melzer's confidence may just carry him through to the finish, even if Golubev comes out playing well. It'll be tough for the young Kazakh to perform at the level he'll need to on such a big stage.

And speaking of form, Mardy Fish is absolutely on fire. He pulled out a really tough win over top seed Andy Roddick today, thanks in no small part to his increased fitness since his surgery. This resurgence has been in the works all year, but Fish is currently on a nine-match winning streak, and he is playing as well as I've seen him. Unfortunately for him, the guy he faces tomorrow is one of the best at throwing players off their rhythm. John Isner has some interesting x-factors going for him, as well. Playing in his first tournament since becoming a part of tennis history, he's into the final. He's also in his own backyard, having played NCAA tennis for the Georga Bulldogs. It will be interesting to see if Fish can get his game going, with Isner banging serves past him - if Mardy can neutralize Isner's serve, and he did that pretty well against Roddick - then he'll come away with the victory, for sure. But if Isner serves as well as he's capable, keeps Mardy from getting any rhythm on return, he could catch Fish on an off-game or get to a tiebreak - and at that point, anything can happen.

Both of these matches mean a lot to all of the players involved, and there are some interesting storylines at play. And the summer season is just getting started!

Week 29 Semifinals

2010-07-24T01:19:00.001-04:00

The exodus of seeds in continuing at the International German Open in Hamburg. Tomaz Bellucci lost in an amazingly tight three set match to Andreas Seppi, 6-7, 7-5, 5-7. Seppi ran away with the first set tiebreak, 7-0 and that was a big decider in the match. Bellucci fought hard, though. Juan Carlos Ferrero also lost today, but he mostly ran out of steam. He won the first set in a tiebreak, but he appeared to be having trouble with injuries by the end of the match, and German Florian Mayer took up the German cause with a great deal of elan. He has an unorthodox style of play, but when he's on, he's a lot of fun to watch. I like that jumping two-handed backhand - you may have seen Marat Safin or Gilles Simon do it, but Mayer does it as well. He got a bit of help from an either exhausted or hobbled Ferrero, but he played strong tennis to get the win.

In the semis, Mayer faces Andrey Golubev, who played unbelievable tennis again in his victory over friend Denis Istomin. Golubev has been on tour for a while and hasn't really done much of consequence, but watching him play this week has been something of a revelation. There's no reason this guy couldn't be in the top 20, if he could maintain this level of play. He displayed really spectacular hitting from every part of the court in his wins over Davydenko and again today. I'd like to see him keep playing this way for a longer stretch of time.

Seppi gets to play the last seed in the draw - Wimbledon doubles champion and French Open singles semifinalist Jurgen Melzer, who would be the new tournament favorite, if it were for the fact that some sort of curse had descended on every other seeded player this tournament. Seppi will be more exhausted than Starace was, but Seppi also has the potential to be more dangerous. I'm expecting a Melzer-Golubev final, but anything can happen, really.

In Atlanta, Americans are continuing to do well. John Isner just blitzed Michael Russell today, a complete contrast to their match earlier in their, where Isner needed to take two tiebreaks to win. Today, he was absolutely on fire, while Russell couldn't quite get his game to work. If Isner plays that way tomorrow, Kevin Anderson is in trouble - Anderson is another tall, big-serving guy, but I think that Isner has shown he's more than just a serve in recent weeks. I see him through to the final.

The other semifinal is much more interesting, as it features Mardy Fish against Andy Roddick. Roddick has a dominant record over Fish, winning 9 of their 10 matches, and Fish's only victory came from a Roddick retirement, way back in 2003. However, Fish is on an absolute roll. He made the final at Queens, won the tournament in Newport, and has blitzed through his first three rounds in Atlanta. He's won a set by 6-1 or better in each match. On the other hand, Roddick has struggled in both of his matches, losing a tiebreak to Rajeev Ram and losing the first set to Xavier Malisse today. Is current form going to trump history, here? This is probably Fish's best chance to get a legitimate win over the U.S. number one in years, so that should be a fascinating match. I think either one could meet Isner in the final.

It should be a fun day of tennis.

Week 29 Quarterfinals

2010-07-23T01:26:00.002-04:00

It's been an interesting week in tennis - the Hamburg tennis tournament has been experiencing an absolute exodus of the seeded players up through the quarterfinals. Despite 16 seeds, all of which got a first-round bye, only three seeded players made it to the quarterfinals: Juan Carlos Ferrero, Jurgen Melzer, and Tomaz Bellucci. The remaining spots are filled out by some mid-to-lower tier players who have played some great tennis to get this far. Kazakhstan player Andrey Golubev just blew Nikolay Davydenko off the court today - he's still trying to get his season back on track. Maybe the American hard-court season will treat him better.

The quarterfinal match-ups may not look like great matches at first glance, but the lower-ranked players who made it this far have played some great games to get this far, and the seeded players have not done very well, thus far. Will the remaining three be able to turn the tide?

Ferrero, the most accomplished player left in the tournament, plays the last German. Florian Mayer has a chance, but he'll have to play his best to keep the local hope alive. The other two seeds both play Italians, with Melzer - the player with the best current form coming into the tournament - playing Potito Starace, and Bellucci - who probably has the brightest future of the players left - playing Andreas Seppi. I have to pick the favorites in all three of these matches, despite the problems they've had thus far. The fourth match between an Uzbek and Kazakh is an interesting one, and based on their performances today, I'd pick Golubev over Istomin, but it could go either way.

In Atlanta, the tournament has been going a bit more according to the proper script. The Americans have been dominating the tourney, with five of the eight quarterfinal spots going to local boys. The only one who had a chance but couldn't quite make it was Donald Young, who fell to Kevin Anderson in the last round.

John Isner and Michael Russell could not be more different as tennis players - their contrast of styles is interesting. They played an amazing match earlier this year, but Isner has gone on to play better tennis since their last meeting in the spring. I'd pick him over Russell. The other all-American match-up is Mardy Fish against Taylor Dent. Fish has already ousted American Robby Ginepri, and he's been playing like he was back when he was in the top 20, so it'll be tough for Dent to come through this one.

The most interesting quarterfinal is between Roddick and Malisse, who played at the final in Atlanta nine years ago, when it was on clay. That was Roddick's first title ever. Roddick didn't play great against Ram today, but he still won everything pretty comfortably (except the second-set tiebreak). It was just enough of a tight match for Roddick to likely lift his game against the potentially-dangerous Belgian.

The fourth match-up is between Kevin Anderson and Lukas Lacko, who got an easy match against a lackluster Lleyton Hewitt in the round of 16 to make it to the quarters. I'll take Anderson in this one, pretty cleanly. Should be fun to watch, though - it's a good day of tennis, in both the U.S. and Germany.

Week 28 Wrap-up and Week 29 Preview

2010-07-19T01:29:00.006-04:00

The finals that we wrapped up today were a study in contrasts - in Bastad, hometown (and on-paper) favorite Robin Soderling lost a tightly-contested match to Spaniard Nicolas Almagro, a big win for Almagro, who hadn't won a title since February of 2009. Almagro is a guy who can hit anyone off the court, if his shots are landing. Soderling used to be the kind of player that Almagro is now - incredibly powerful, but not very consistent. Almagro has the game to be where Soderling is now, if he can just figure out how to be as consistent as Robin has become, week-in and week-out. He managed to best him today though, and that's what mattered.

The other final of the day was more anti-climactic, as Gael Monfils was forced to retire with an injured ankle against Albert Montanes. That's a shame, because that would have been a great match-up. Gael has trouble at the last stage of tournaments - he is now 2-8 in finals. Credit Montanes for putting together a great week, but that has to be disappointing for Monfils.

Looking ahead to next week, there are two interesting events. The first, the continuation of the second clay-court season, takes place in Hamburg: the International German Open is an ATP 500 even on clay. This section of the season is still odd to me, but this tournament features some great players. Davydenko is still in Europe, hoping to get his post-injury year back on track as the top seed. Basically, all of the clay court stalwarts are back for this tournament - with the exception of Soderling, who was just playing Bastad because he's Swedish. Of course, this event used to be the Hamburg Masters before it was downgraded and moved so Shanghai could be put into that tier. The tournament organizers just lost an appeal to dispute that downgrade, so it'll be interesting to see how the tournament goes. It should still be a fun event, though.

First-round matches to watch are Chiudinelli-Chardy, Nieminen-Christophe Rochus, and actually about a half dozen other appetizing match-ups between solid clay court players. There aren't any of the really big guns playing this tournament this year, but there's a lot of good players, so it would be a fun tournament to see.

That said, it's tough for me to get too pumped about the second swing of the clay-court season in Europe, because I'm gearing up for the American summer hard courts, which are getting underway this week in Atlanta. This is the first year of this tournament in Atlanta, as they got the tournament from Indianapolis, when it closed due to bad financial pressure last year. Fortunately for Atlanta, the field (which was already pretty strong in American players) got a huge boost when Andy Roddick took a wildcard. That, plus hometown boy John Isner's recent publicity at Wimbledon, should give the tournament a pretty good first year.

Most of the game's top US players are here, with the exception of Sam Querrey. Taylor Dent and James Blake open against each other, which may be a good match, but it's a shame they have to meet at such an early stage. Donald Young opens against Dudi Sela, and Michael Russell gets Benjamin Becker. Roddick should be the favorite in this tournament, but he only stands to gain 100 ranking points, and that's if he wins the whole thing. He already has a win and a final at other 250 tournaments this year, so I imagine his appearance has more to do with building some form, helping out the new tournament, and probably a hefty appearance fee as well. I'm looking forward to seeing him in action on U.S. Soil again, as his European campaign was pretty lackluster, after a stellar run in the earlier part of the year.

Week 28 Quarterfinals

2010-07-16T01:33:00.004-04:00

This brief relapse into clay-court tennis is moving along nicely, and we're down to the last eight in each of the two tournaments taking place this week. The only top five seed who hasn't made it to this stage of the tournament is Nikolay Davydenko, who lost in a tight match to Daniel Gimeno-Traver. Davydenko is still not having a great time after his injury lay-off. Other than that, the rest of the players that you would expect to have made it this far have done so.

But the way the match-ups have broken down, the only two seeded players meeting tomorrow are at the bottom of their respective draws, but those are also the best match - on paper - by far. Tommy Robredo, who's been on quite a slide lately, meets Fernando Verdasco, who also hasn't been making much noise since before the French Open. They're 4-4 against each other, but this is only their third meeting on clay, which is a bit of a surprise to me. It should be a good match.

That's in Bastad, and in Stuttgart, Albert Montanes gets Jurgen Melzer, who might just be bound for the top ten if he can keep up the sort of form he's had lately. I give him the edge over Montanes, for sure.

Other than those two matches, I think the seeded players have the advantage in all of their matches, and Swiss number three Marco Chiudinelli may make it to the semifinals in place of Davydenko.

Another reason that this little stretch of the tennis calendar is somewhat dead is that this is also the World Team Tennis season, such as it is. It's a really strange little league, filled mostly with fourth or fifth-tier players, while each team has one or two stars to draw the crowds. I saw the Bryan Brothers play tonight in Kansas City, and it was a really weird experience. In addition to the Bryans, I saw Ricardo Mello, Rik De Voest, Martin Damm, Chanelle Scheepers, Carly Gullickson, and Jarmila Groth. All fine players, but it became immensely clear once Damm and De Voest took on the Bryans in doubles that they were on a completely different tier. It was great to see the Bryans in action, but it sure didn't last very long.

I'm looking forward to things to pick up a bit - and next week's inaugural tennis tournament in Atlanta (after Indianapolis lost its sponsor) just got a big boost as Andy Roddick agreed to play. He was doing so great in the U.S. earlier this year, his performance dipped a bit in Europe. Here's hoping he can get back to his prior level next week.

Newport and Davis Cup Wrap-up, Week 28 Preview

2010-07-12T00:35:00.005-04:00

At the Campbell's Hall of Fame tennis championships, Mardy Fish won a tightly contested match against Olivier Rochus to take the title. This was a very impressive and steady performance from Fish, who has a pretty abysmal record in finals. Fortunately for him, Olivier Rochus's is not much better. The American recovered from being frustrated at some line calls at the end of the first set to win the second two cleanly enough - he got one break in each of the second two sets. In the final game of the match, Fish saved two break points - the first ones that Rochus had since the very first set.

It's a big win for Fish, who lost the Queens final about a month ago, and will hopefully bode well for the rest of his year, and the next few years of his career. It's unfortunate to think about, but as Fish is now 29 years old and has had a lot of injury problems, so he probably can count the number of good tennis years he has left on one hand. If he can keep up this form, though, I can see him making it back to the top 30, top 20, with pretty high confidence.

As for the Davis Cup, the action today was pretty exciting. Nikolay Davydenko overcome a slow start against Argentine Eduardo Schwank to beat him in four sets and redeem himself after losing his first singles match and playing his part in losing the doubles point as well. However, there was nothing he could do to help Mikhail Youzhny against David Nalbandian, who played like a man possessed this weekend. When is Nalby going to get back in action on the main tour, because he demolished both Davydenko and Youzhny, each in three sets, by blasting winners from every part of the court. I want this guy back in the top 20, where he belongs!

In Croatia, Marin Cilic put up a spirited effort against Novak Djokovic, and the crowd nearly rushed on court to break Djokovic's legs if they could have. The Croatians were warned numerous times to keep quiet, lest their man be docked a point. It was the last thing that Cilic needed, because he had enough trouble just handling Djokovic's stunning ground-stroke depth. There was nothing Cilic could do - this was the best I've seen Djokovic play in a long time. He was actually playing like the number two player in the world. We'll see if he can keep up that form during the U.S. hardcourt season.

Looking ahead to this next week, we have a strange, carryover week of clay court tournaments, before the U.S. hard court season starts in earnest. The tournaments in Bastad and Stuttgart are on the red clay. This Indian Summer of the clay court season has some interesting match-ups on offer. I'll do a quick overview of each.

In Stuttgart, Davydenko, Melzer, and Monfils are all in action. Also, an odd wildcard went to Dustin Brown, who was playing on grass this week in Newport. It'll be interesting to see how his net-rushing, big-serving game works on clay. The stronger field is probably in action at Bastad, where all the top Spanish players (minus Rafael Nadal) are going to try to forget about their recent Davis Cup loss. While hometown boy Soderling is the top seed, he'll need to navigate a field with Ferrer, Almagro, Verdasco, and Robredo. It'll be fun to see the last bit of clay-court tennis until next year.

Newport Finals and Davis Cup Update

2010-07-10T22:27:00.002-04:00

The Campbell's Hall of Fame tennis championship has gone pretty much as expected, since the middle of the week. Mardy Fish and Olivier Rochus are set to play each other in the final, as they were the only seeds left by the third round. They're 1-1 against each other, and their last match, in 2007 in Lyon, was just about as close possible. Three tiebreak sets, with the third set tiebreak going to 17-15. Rochus won that, but Fish won their earlier meeting, though that was all the way back in 2002. This match could really go either way, as neither player has a great record in finals. Fish is 3-11 while Rochus is 2-5. I lean towards Fish in this one, but neither result would surprise me.

As for the Davis cup, there have already been some surprising results. In an absolute shock, France beat Spain 3-0 in the first three matches of their Davis Cup tie. While I thought it was possible that France could pull the upset, I never would have imagined that it might go down like this. Monfils played brilliantly against Ferrer, showing a lot of toughness to come back from being so close to winning the match in the fourth set, only to ultimately have to go five. Normally, I would have figured that to be the type of match that Ferrer would win, but I give Le Monf a lot of credit for the guts he showed in toughing out what must have been an exhausting victory.

But the real surprise performance came from Michael Llodra, who upset Fernando Verdasco in the second singles match on Friday. Llodra served absolutely brilliantly, winning 72% of points on serve and only facing two break chances. On return, he manufactured an amazing 16 break chances. He may have only converted on 25% of them, but it was enough. That's a huge win for the 30-year old Frenchman, and he followed that up by playing a part of the doubles team that clinched the victory for the French, as he and Benneteau defeated Lopez and Verdasco. I'm really surprised that Spain, the two-time defending champion, fell at this stage. They had been without Rafael Nadal before, but their tennis talent is deep enough that it hadn't mattered much up to this point. I expect they'll continue to be a huge favorite in the coming years of the Davis Cup, but they're out until 2011. What a shock.

For the privilege of playing France, rather than Spain, Argentina is currently leading against Russia. The first match of the singles was a real thriller, as Nalbandian and Davydenko both just walloping the ball from every part of the court. It may not have been beautiful tennis, since they both missed the mark more often than they hit it, but it was exciting. I think Davydenko is still not fully recovered from his injury lay-off, as he lost that match in straight sets and then was also a part of the Russian's dropping the doubles point today. I'm surprised, I have to admit, that Argentina was able to win without Nalbandian playing, but that was a pretty convincing victory. I expect that they'll probably sub out Gabashvili for Davydenko in the reverse singles, and he may be able to win against Leonardo Mayer. That means the tie will come down to Nalbandian against Youzhny, which would be quite an interesting decider. We'll see if it comes down to that. It's possible that Nalbandian might win the Davis Cup this year, almost entirely by himself.

Croatia-Serbia has been interesting to watch thus far, and I've been pretty much spot-on with my predictions. Novak Djokovic and Nenand Zimonjic (along with doubles partner Tipsarevic) won easily, giving Serba a 2-1 advantage. Cilic is going to need to pull off a monumental upset against Djokovic to give Ljubicic a chance to pull of the upset. I don't think Djokovic is going to lose - he may not have played spectacular tennis in the last few months, but he did play amazing in the first round of the Davis Cup, and maybe his performance here could turn his year back around. Even though Djokovic is back up to number two, he hasn't even made a final since Dubai, and he hasn't beaten a player ranked inside the top 20 in that time, either. But Cilic has been underperforming since making the Aussie Open semis, too. This is a big match for both guys.

On the other hand, there's not much to say about the Czech Republic and Chile. Even without Berdych or Stepanek, the Czechs ran roughshod over their Chilean opponents. It was a beatdown, with Chile winning just one set in the doubles, and never getting closer then 6-3 in either singles match. In fact, both singles players won a combined total of eight games in six sets. Chile is in trouble without Gonzalez, is the message to take from this. We'll see if he's fit again by the time Davis Cup kicks up again in 2011, because otherwise, Chile might find themselves relegated out of the world group, pretty soon.

Newport Mid-Week and Davis Cup Preview

2010-07-09T02:35:00.005-04:00

Some interesting things happening in Rhode Island. Top seed Sam Querrey was felled by an absolutely inspired Dustin Brown - the Jamaican lost only one point off his first serve and served at 67%. Querrey may not have been at his absolute best, but credit to Brown for playing the best I've ever seen him. Unfortunately, he was unable to sustain that level, and fell rather tamely to Brian Dabul in the next round.

Rajeev Ram, the defending champion, was also upset in the second round to South African Raven Klaasen, who has a career ATP-level record of 5-2 over the past 8 years. I'm willing to bet that all of those matches are either in Davis Cup play or in the Johannesburg event. Credit to him for getting that win, but he also fell to Olivier Rochus in the quarterfinals.

Nicolas Mahut looked to be nursing a back injury in his second-round match against Frank Dancevic, but he didn't quit. He played it tough, but he seemed to be in pain whenever he went up to serve, and he ended up losing in two sets. All the same, is this guy an iron man or what?

In addition to Rochus, the only seed left in the draw is Mardy Fish, who has looked dominant, so far. I'm hoping he'll see young American Ryan Harrison in the semifinals. Harrison demolished Slovakian Karol Beck, seeded sixth, in the first round. I'm seeing a Mardy Fish-Olivier Rochus final, but since they're the only two seeds remaining and this tournament has been seeing quite an exodus of its top players, that may not play out.

In addition, tomorrow marks the first day of the second round of the 2010 Davis Cup. There are some interesting match-ups, but also some big-name players who are sitting this week out with injury. Let's look at who's in action:

France and Spain are two of the most dominant nations in tennis today, but both teams are missing their top players. Nadal and Tsonga are both on the sidelines, and unfortunately for France, Spain's B-team is more impressive than the second squad that France is putting up for action. The first singles match of the day is Gael Monfils and David Ferrer, which is an extremely appetizing match, and France's chances will depend largely on how well Monfils can play. He's the best player that's active on the French side, but his record in Davis Cup has not been great. After his first rubber with Ferrer, Michael Llodra takes on Fernando Verdasco. Since France is playing at home and on a hard court, I think the big-serving Llodra has an outside chance against "Hot Sauce," but it will depend in large part on his first-serve percentage. If Spain finishes day one with a 2-0 lead, the French are toast.

The second quartefinal is between Russia and Argentina, with Russia at home and again on hard courts. Since the majority of Argentine players prefer to play on clay, and last year's U.S. Open champion Juan Martin Del Potro is still out with injury, the Argentine squad doesn't look like they have much of a shot against the Russians. But they have a potential spoiler on their side - the recently-injured David Nalbandian, who saved Argentina in the first round against Sweden, is the country's only hope. He opens against Davydenko, which could be a cracker of a match. If both players are healthy, it may be the best match of the first day, but that's a big if. Nalbandian holds a slight 6-5 advantage over Davydenko, so we'll see how that one plays out. The second match of the day is Youzhny against Leonardo Mayer, which would be a big upset for Mayer.

In what is sure to be a hotly-contested, Eastern European fight, Croatia takes on Serbia, in Croatia. The Serbs have Nenad Zimonjic, so you can almost give them the doubles point already. The tie will likely hinge on whether either Marin Cilic or Ivan Ljubicic can upset Novak Djokovic. Both of the Croats had extremely lackluster Wimbledon campaigns, while Novak made it to the semifinals. He's clearly the form player here, but is he getting tired? This is another one that should be fun to watch how it plays out. Also, Serbia's number three player Janko Tipsarevic just recently got married, so maybe his tennis will be invigorated by that change in his life.

The last quarterfinal match-up is, honestly, a bit of a letdown. Chile takes on the Czech Republic, but Fernando Gonzalez, Tomas Berdych, and Radek Stepanek are all out of action. That leaves us with the scintillating match-ups of Nicolas Massu against Ivo Minar and Paul Capdeville against Jan Hajek. Considering that the match is taking place in Chile and Massu only seems to play well when he's playing for his country (see 2004 Olympics), I think the edge goes to the Chileans. But this is definitely the tie with the least star power in action.

Wimbledon's less a week gone, and things are already picking up again. Injuries aside, I love the packed tennis season, don't you?

Newport Preview

2010-07-06T01:53:00.006-04:00

With Wimbledon done, we have one last grass court gasp before the surface fades into memory for the next 11 months: the Hall of Fame Championships in Newport, Rhode Island. Since it's the week after Wimbledon, it doesn't usually draw the greatest players in the game (since they're either resting or readying themselves for the Davis Cup) but it is the first tournament on U.S. soil for several weeks, and always has a handful of middle-tier American players happy to be back in action after what was surely a long and often frustration European clay court tour. I'll take a quick look today at some of the interesting storylines heading into this week.

Sam Querrey is the top seed in this tournament, and he opens against Jesse Levine another young American who doesn't really have Querrey's weaponry. Sam made it to the final here last year, where he lost (surprisingly) to Rajeev Ram. I think he'll do one better this year - he already won at the Queens Club, which had a much, much tougher field to work through. If he wins that, he'll get to play the number one Jamaican player Dustin Brown, who is starting to put his game together and become a solid top-100 player, which I'm excited about.

Unfortunately for another American in the draw, Taylor Dent lost to perennial qualifier Go Soeda from Japan in the first round. Dent wasn't able to put together the kind of grass court season that he was hoping for, and this isn't the best way to end it. It's a benefit for another player in this section, though - young Australian Carsten Ball, who I think should see Querrey in the third round. They played in last year's Los Angeles final, and it was a fine match.

The second quarter of the draw has Olivier Rochus, fresh off his near-upset of Novak Djokovic at Wimbledon, as well as big Australian lefty server (much like Ball) Chris Guccione. The defending champ, Rajeev Ram, is also in this section, but I admit that I'll be shocked if he can repeat his title run from last year. He's good on the grass, but he was a lucky loser here last year - everything broke his way.

Mardy Fish is in the third quarter, as well as Federer's recent near-upset opponent Alejandro Falla. We'll see how Falla can deal with that close call - his first round opponent should have a bit of understanding about it, because it's former Rhode Island finalist and loser of the longest match in tennis history, Nicolas Mahut. I hope he can win this one - he deserves a win after player for so long and coming up empty.

I'm really excited about the last quarter, for one reason - it has young American Ryan Harrison, who upset sixth seed Karol Beck in the first round already. I think that he has a good draw, and could possibly make it to the quarterfinals here. Maybe this will be his coming out tournament; I really think Harrison is the next big name in U.S. tennis, and he should be top-20 bound, at comparable levels to where Isner and Querrey are right now. But he'll have to get there one step at a time, and a deep run into this tournament for the 18-year old would be a fine way to do it.

Wimbledon Wrap-Up

2010-07-05T02:53:00.002-04:00

After three years of magnificent, five-set finals at Wimbledon, we've finally had our first dud in a while. Despite the scorelines for the three sets being close, Berdych was never really in the match. Nadal actually did not play that well - he made a lot of unforced errors and only made a few of the trademark spectacular shots that he was making left and right against Andy Murray. His forehand, while heavy and spinny as ever, was not quite as easily placed as he would have liked - an unusual number of the Spaniard's usually reliable down-the-line shots drifted wide or long.

Despite the fact that Nadal's level of play was not as high as it's been during recent rounds, Berdych was unable to find his top gear as well. It would be one thing to come on court at the Wimbledon final and just get beaten by one of the best players the game's ever known. On the other hand, it's quite another to come out and not be able to muster your best tennis, because what other occasion is going to come along where it would be needed more?

Berdych was unable to play as well as he did against Federer or even Djokovic, and as a result, his defeat was all but assured. His other failure was an apparent unwillingness or inability to adopt another strategy when his initial gameplan was clearly unable to do the job against Nadal. Berdych tried to slug it out from the baseline, and when that didn't seem to work, he just kept on doing it. Credit to Berdych for playing so well that he made it this far, but it is disappointing that he couldn't do a bit better today.

It may have been that injury was troubling him, as he's pulled out of the Czech Republic's appearance in the Davis Cup this week. Nadal's done the same, but the loss for Spain - who has a very deep field and people of capable players to include - is not nearly so dear as the loss for the Czechs, who are already missing Radek Stepanek due to injury.

All in all, this Wimbledon fortnight had such an exciting and historic first week, that it was almost a guarantee that the second would be a letdown. There was some good tennis and a satisfying victor in the end, but aside from Roger Federer's defeat, there was nothing that really compared with the stunning action that absolutely littered the first six days of the tournament.

Almost everyone except Nadal and Serena are going to go away from this tournament disappointed - Yun-Hsun Lu is probably going to be happy for his run to the quarterfinals and his subsequent skyrocketing 40 places up in the ATP rankings, but everybody else has got to be thinking about missed opportunities. Falla and Bozoljiac could have beaten Federer, and Petszchner and Haase could have beaten Nadal. Surely, they will be encouraged by taking the game's best so close, but any excitement is leavened by the disappointment of not being able to seal the deal.

Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic fell short at the semifinal stage, once again. For players of their caliber, they won't be satisfied. They want to be in the finals, they want to win grand slams. And they certainly don't want to lose in straight sets on their way. For Andy Roddick, this is another chapter in the strange and mystifying history of the American losing heartbreaking fifth sets. I don't think it's indicative of anything new or worrisome for his progress, except that it's another chance he let get away. If he had beaten Lu in that fifth set, he really could have made a run at this title. Who knows if his draws will break so well in the coming years?

And Roger Federer drops to number three in the world this week, for the first time in seven years. With Nadal now the owner of two grand slams and three masters series shields this year, he has all but sealed up the year end number one ranking. It will be interesting to see if this loss, probably the most shocking in a year of shocking losses since the Australian Open, pumps up Fed or signals his waning interest in competing, day in and day out, in a sport that he so effortlessly dominated for more than half a decade.

While most players are taking the week (or month) off, or at least getting ready for the next round of Davis Cup, the tennis calendar marches on, and this week features the Hall of Fame championships in Newport, Rhode Island, the last grass court tournament of the year. They were kind enough to give Nicolas Mahut a wildcard (I expect he'll be getting a lot of these in the near future). It's actually an interesting field, but even though play begins tomorrow, I won't take an in-depth look until then. After spending two weeks getting up early to catch the tennis live, I need to catch up on my sleep.

Wimbledon Final

2010-07-04T02:19:00.003-04:00

The women's final this morning was - I'm sorry to say - a bit of a dud. Serena won, rather handily, as one might expect. I was glad to see Zvonareva free from meltdowns or crying fits, and she was respectful in her post-match comments. I think she was just happy to have made it that far - it's been the best two weeks of her career, for sure - and she wasn't going to let a little thing like losing to the best player in the women's game today. Unfortunately for Vera, the hits just kept on coming as she also lost in the doubles final to the unseeded duo King/Shvedova, and apparently she was unable to keep from breaking down in tears on court there. That's a shame.

Looking ahead to tomorrow's match between the men's finalists, there is a chance that we'll have a repeat performance. Nadal is 7-3 against Tomas Berdych, including winning the last six. The last time Berdych even took a set off Nadal was back in 2006. Now Berdych is playing the best two weeks of tennis he's ever put together - until last month's French Open, the Czech had only been past the fourth round of a grand slam once. And now he's in the Wimbledon final. Will he be able to rise to the occasion?

I hate to say it, but I'm afraid that he won't be able to meet the test of beating Rafael Nadal on this court, in a grand slam final. It's nothing like anything that Berdych has ever been a part of before. Berdych has five titles to his name, but the people he's beaten to win those titles are of a different sort of caliber of player than someone like Rafael Nadal, who is - without question - going down as one of the game's all-time greats.

Berdych was lucky to face Djokovic in the semis, because the Djoker had not been in particularly good form, while Nadal got a real test against Andy Murray. Considering that both matches were about equally difficult for the winners, Nadal's performance was significantly more impressive. If Nadal can manage that kind of form for three sets tomorrow, it's unlikely that Berdych will have any say in the outcome of the match.

This is not to say that Berdych doesn't have a shot. He'll need to play as well as he did against Roger Federer, if not even better, and he'll need to be able to keep it up for an entire match. He'll need to keep from being overcome by the situation, and mental toughness has not been a hallmark of his game. He's going to need to capitalize on every chance that he gets, because he's not going to get very many. It's a big ask for the big man, and I'll be honest - it's tough for me to see him pulling it off, all things considered. But that's why we play the game, after all. I didn't expect him to beat Federer, either, and he did that convincingly. We'll see what happens.

Wimbledon Day 11

2010-07-03T02:32:00.004-04:00

The men's semifinals are complete. Despite being two straight sets victories for the apparent favorites, they were fairly compelling matches, I have to say. Both featured one-break differences in the first and third sets, and very tight tiebreaks in the second. In general, the level of play from all four players was high, but ultimately, the two winners were able to perform more consistently and raise their games at the necessary moments.

Djokovic and Berdych both played some excellent points, but ultimately the biggest difference came down to serving acumen, and the tall Czech player was significantly stronger in this aspect of the game. Djokovic served too many double-faults, and he served them at crucial points in the match - on set point in the second set tiebreak and then at break point to allow Berdych to serve for the match in the third. This was despite some scintillating play to save (or allow Berdych to lose) four set points during that tiebreak. Ultimately, Djokovic has not played enough big matches of late, and this was the biggest one he had played in a very long time, while Berdych has become the surprise big-match player of the year.

The other semi was more hotly contested, though the scoreline is nearly identical. Murray had tens of thousands of his countrymen cheering him on, but that was not enough to get him past the lightning quick movement and bludgeoning forehand of Rafael Nadal. There were several moments in the match where Murray almost made that kind of stunning, game-changing shot that turned the tides of his matches against John Isner and Marin Cilic at the U.S. Open - highlight reel stuff that pumps him up and demoralizes his opponent. But at every instance, Nadal was ready and waiting to return one amazing near-winner with a slightly better reply.

Nadal looked the best he's looked all tournament, skipping around the court so quickly and lightly that it's easy to forget he was slogging his way through the French Open just a month ago, knee-deep in red clay. His forehand was unbelievable - he unleashed on a few shots that, to borrow a phrase from another sport, nearly "tore the cover off the ball." Despite the fact that he's going up against one of the bigger hitters on tour in the final, I find it unlikely that Berdych is going to be able to out-hit Nadal, if he plays this way.

As for tomorrow's women's final, Serena Williams is the clear favorite. No matter how different Zvonareva has looked this week, no matter how stunning her performance in her run to the final, it's nearly impossible to beat Serena in a grand slam final. Maria Sharapova has done it once and her own sister has done it twice, but that's it. Zvonareva's run to the final has been a combination of some mysterious force or event settling her brain, along with a draw that opened up for her at the right points, and some really excellent play when it was required. But I don't know if that will be enough to get her past Serena Williams.

The most dangerous thing for Serena is to assume that is already true, though. Zvonareva's best chance is to surprise the defending champion, catch her off-guard, and hopefully send her reeling long enough to land the knock-out blow. Zvonareva will have to play the match of her life, and Serena will have to be a little bit off her game, for the Russian to manage the upset. It's definitely unlikely, but I wouldn't say it's beyond the realm of possibility. We'll see what happens.

Wimbledon Days 9 and 10

2010-07-02T02:17:00.002-04:00

We're all set for the women's final. I think if you had been told a few weeks ago that a Russian was going to make it to the final at Wimbledon, your list would probably have included Dementieva, Safina, Kuznetsova, maybe Petrova or Kleybanova, maybe even Kirilenko. But Zvonareva looked like she was on the road to total mental breakdown - I was on-site when I saw her play her match at the U.S. Open last year against Flavia Pennetta, where she completely broke down, started bawling on court, and tried to remove her knee wrappings. After that, it was hard to imagine her keeping herself together for a run like this one.

But she's played very well, in upsetting Kim Clijsters and then facing an in-form Bulgarian Pironkova. I was very impressed with her performance, I have to say. She served well and kept her errors to a minimum. Her play was pretty much unrecognizable from the time I watched her on center court nine months ago. She even upset the Williams sisters in doubles this week, as part of the first team to beat the Williams sisters in more than a year. This could be her week - but having to face Serena in the final is no easy task. I'll have more to say about that tomorrow.

The men's semifinals will take place tomorrow, and just like in the quarterfinals, there is one name missing. One side features Nadal and Murray, who both overcome less than ideal starts (though Nadal's was much slower) to beat their quarterfinal opponents in four sets. That's what everyone expected heading into the tournament. And on the other side, Djokovic is in the quarterfinals, which was essentially a guarantee as soon as he beat Hewitt and Roddick flamed out. But facing him, rather than defending champion and seven-time defending finalist Roger Federer, we have the big Czech phenom, Tomas Berdych!

That was an amazing match, honestly. The quarterfinals were generally good (none were classics, but all were interesting in their own way) but Berdych's display was unlike anything I'd ever seen from the big man. At least, it was unlike anything I'd seen from him before in that he maintained his amazing level of play until he had sealed the deal. Before, I've seen him play that well, only to collapse and give it away (see Australian Open 2008). This time Berdych managed to keep up his stellar level of play even when it looked like he might fade away. It wasn't like the match he played against Federer earlier in the year, which Federer essentially gave away with errors and shanked forehands. Berdych played well enough to take this match from the former world number one, who will - shockingly - drop to number three next week.

As for tomorrow's match-ups, Djokovic has not played especially well this fortnight, and has found himself in the semifinals thanks to some intermittent good point and an undeniably favorable draw. He took full advantage of meeting Yen-Hsun Lu in the quarterfinals, dispatching of him easily, but is that the best preparation for a player who just upset Roger Federer? Djokovic is 2-0 against Berdych, but it's hard to say that's enough to really predict the winner of tomorrow's match. Berdych is almost the favorite to win it, at this point. It should be interesting to see if Berdych can keep rolling, or if Djokovic will find his game and make his first Grand Slam final since winning the Australian Open in 2008.

But Nadal-Murray, now that's a tough one to pick. Andy Murray's progress at Wimbledon has been interesting. He's played four times, and each time, he made it a round further. In 2008, he made the quarterfinals after winning a stunning comeback against Richard Gasquet in the 4th round. At that point, he was clearly exhausted and lost to Nadal. They also played at the Australian Open the year before, where Nadal won a long, grinding match, which Murray only lost on fitness, not talent. This year, at the Australian Open, it went the other way, as Nadal's knees gave out on him and Murray made it through.

These two have quite a history, as you can tell, and whichever one of them wins in the semifinals will be the favorite to win the tournament. Nadal, though he may not be 100% fit, just dominated the French Open and still hasn't lost a match here since 2007. In fact, he hasn't lost to anyone not named Federer at Wimbledon since 2005. I'm really excited about this match - can Nadal make the final again, all but sealing his place as World Number One at the end of the year, or will Murray fulfill the British hopes and make it to the final, something that Tim Henman could never do?

There are so many storylines converging in this one match, so many angles - and it's worth noting that these are two stellar tennis players, both at or very near the height of their power. It should be a lot of fun to watch. Here's hoping for a pair of good matches and that no one gets hurt.

Wimbledon Day 8

2010-06-30T00:48:00.003-04:00

The women's quarterfinals were completed today, and there were two pretty shocking upsets. Former champion Venus Williams lost to Bulgarian Tsvetana Pironkova, who had previously won a single match at Wimbledon in four tries. She's now into the semis, where she'll face Vera Zvonareva, who beat Kim Clijsters in another shocking result. Serena's victory over Na Li was pretty straightforward, and her opponent in the semis will be Petra Kvitova. Of the four players remaining in the women's draw, one of them has made it to a grand slam final (Serena) one of the others has made it past the fourth round at a grand slam before (Zvonareva).

At this point, if Serena doesn't take this title, it will be an incredible disappointment. It would always have been the case, but let's be honest here, the players that are left - they're sort of scrubs. I'll be shocked if Serena loses a set in the last two rounds, honestly. Really disappointing for Clijsters and Venus, who were slated to meet in the semis. And it's a shame for the promoters, too - who's going to be beating down the gates to get to the Pironkova_Zvonareva semifinal?

As for the men, the quarterfinals are up tomorrow and we're one player short of having all the top dogs there. The world's top four are present, and they're each facing a tough opponent - with one exception.

Federer takes on Tomas Berdych, who beat Fed at the Olympics in 2004 and this year at Miami, but otherwise has not won a match. He nearly had him at the Australian Open a few years, but duffed an easy volley at break point in the third set, and then was never in the match again. Berdych is finally getting himself together in order to play up to his potential at slams, with a recent semifinal run at the French. It will be a huge shock if he upsets Federer, since Fed, once he struggled through his first few rounds, seem to be back on his feet.

Rafael Nadal gets Robin Soderling, once again. This will be very interesting, as the pair had a very contentious Wimbledon match a few years ago, which - as you may recall - ended with some bad blood between the players. Of course, their recent rivalry is much more interesting, but no matter how soundly Soderling thwacked Nadal at the French last year, Nadal's victory this year in the final was much more emphatic. If it hadn't been for that match against Ferrer, I'd give Robin a chance, but in their last rounds, Nadal looked to be the better player, with Soderling's level of player going up and down - and in his bad patches, he looked really bad. As long as Nadal's knees hold up, and Soderling has a lapse or two or doesn't reach his highest level, then Nadal will come out the victor.

The third quarterfinal is Andy Murray against JW Tsonga, which could be interesting, but probably won't be. Tsonga beat Murray in a thrilling match in the first round of the Australian Open in 2008, the start of his run to the final, but really, Tsonga has not been able to play at that level since that tournament. Murray is the more solid and has looked better this week. Tsonga will have to find some special magic to win this one.

The final quarterfinal, which should have been Novak Djokovic against Andy Roddick instead features... Yun-Tsun Lu? Not much to say, here. Lu's dream run ends at the quarterfinals. There's no way Djokovic is going to make the same mistake that Roddick did, simple as that.

Wimbledon Day 7

2010-06-29T01:26:00.002-04:00

At super monday, even though the schedule was stellar, the tennis didn't quite live up to the bar set by the first week. There were some ugly matches today, and - unfortunately - the good ones didn't last very long.

The biggest stories of the day were the dual departures of the two sentimental favorites: Justine Henin lost to countrywoman Kim Clijsters for the third time this year and the first time in a slam since 2002, if I'm not mistaken. That was a pretty ugly match, as Kim came out and couldn't find the court, then once she got up a set, it was Henin's turn to crack under pressure.

The level of play was slightly better in Andy Roddick's debacle of a match against Yen-Hsun Lu, but the tactics were way worse. Roddick lost this match the same he's lost almost all of the nail-biter big matches in his career - by being passive and hoping his lower-ranked, less-experienced opponent would blink. Unfortunately for him, it was Roddick who blinked. He lost two out of three tiebreaks. Even though he was only broken once in the entire match, it was enough for him to lose, just like in last year's final. This is really a chilling loss for Andy - he's never lost to somebody ranked as low as Lu at Wimbledon, in his entire career. And if that wasn't enough, since Roddick made the semis last year, he loses 1020 points from last year's result. If Tsonga and Berdych make it another round or two, he could end up number eleven in the rankings next week. Ouch.

Other than that, things were not especially exciting. Serena Williams beat Sharapova in a really high-quality match, but it didn't last long enough. Soderling beat Ferrer in an ugly, up-and-down affair that neither player seemed eager to close out. Sam Querrey was with Andy Murray for one set, but after not be able to capitalize on his chances, Murray ran away with it. Jankovic retired with injury and Wozniacki might as well have, losing 2 and love. Nadal and Federer each dropped just eight games. And even though Djokovic managed to beat Lleyton Hewitt, he was having some breathing problems on the way, and that didn't bode well for his chances.

The women's quarterfinals take place tomorrow, where Kim Clijsters plays Vera Zvonareva, Serena Williams plays Na Li, and Venus Williams plays Pironkova. The fourth match, I'm sorry to say, is not really of particular consequence. But I expect the Williams sisters and Clijsters to come through to the semis - Kim may have the chance to do what she did last year at the U.S. Open, which was beat both the Williams sisters in the same Grand Slam. Or, just as likely (if not more so) we'll get another Serena-Venus final.

Actually, after today, I think that the odds of Williams-Williams and Federer-Nadal finals just skyrocketed. On the one hand, that is an exciting possibility. On the other, I'm ready for a change of scenery; I'm ready for Roddick to stop losing in such heartbreakers, for example.

Wimbledon First Week Review

2010-06-27T22:45:00.003-04:00

With the first six days of action in Wimbledon complete, I think it's fair to say that this was the craziest first week of tennis since I started paying attention. At the Australian Open in 2008, there was an amazing middle weekend - you may remember James Blake's first ever five-set win and Federer being pushed to five sets by Janko Tipsarevic, as well as Hewitt-Baghdatis ending at four in the morning - but the rest of the week had not been up to par.

This week, the action has been coming from hard and fast from day one, when Federer nearly lost to Alejandro Falla, on the first match on center court. Of course, the highlight of the week was the historic, titanic struggle between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut, but even though that stands out for its sheer unlikelihood, there has been no shortage of other exciting events.

The first Saturday lived up to the rest of the week, as Rafael Nadal was pushed to five sets for the second time in three rounds, going down 2 sets to 1 before dominating the last two against Phillipp Petzschner. Sam Querrey was broken while serving for the match against Xavier Malisse, before coming back to win it 9-7 in what was probably the last game that they could have played before they would have been forced to suspend play on account of darkness. And even though it wasn't the top story on everyone's radar, the top seeds in the men's doubles draw lost to an unseeded British pair 8-6 in the fifth set.

The best part about this first week is that, despite the fact that nearly every player has been tested in these first six days of the tournament (only Robin Soderling and Andy Murray have yet to drop a set, I believe), there have not been any major upsets. The reason that this is beneficial is that some really spectacular matches are ready to get going when play resumes on Monday, which means that the second week has the potential of living up to the first.

It's worth noting that the second Monday at Wimbledon is a unique day on the tennis calendar. Since Wimbledon does not have any play on the middle Sunday, play resumes with every single fourth round match on the schedule, on both the men's side and the women's side. It is often the most exciting day of the year in the tennis calendar, and there's some potential for that again this year.

Roger Federer opens against Jurgen Melzer. It's surprising to me that these two players have never met on tour before, since they've both been around for a decade. Normally, you'd have to say that Federer is the huge favorite, but Fed has not played especially well recently, and Melzer represents a much tougher challenge than Alejandro Falla or Ilija Bozoljac. And he's a lefty, as well. There are murmurings of an upset, but it's definitely a long shot.

Second on center court is a rematch of the 2004 Wimbledon final, Serena Williams against Maria Sharapova. Serena leads the head to head 5-2, but one of the two wins for the Russian was in that final. It seems unlikely that Sharapova is going to turn the head-to-head around tomorrow, since Serena is in much better form, and has played better over the course of the last week - with the possible exception of the second set against her third round opponent. This could be a tight one, if Sharapova is on and Serena is a bit off.

The third match on center is Andy Murray against Sam Querrey. Murray is 3-0 against the young American, who has never even won a set. Considering that Murray has yet to drop a set this fortnight, it's going to be a tough match. But Querrey has gotten about as far in the game as he's capable of going by dominating the lower-tier events. He really needs to step up and get some wins over the game's top players on the biggest stage. This is a big opportunity for Sam, and could be turning point for his career, if he manages the upset.

You know that the order of play is stacked if Court 1 has five grand slam winners out of six players. The first match is the battle of the Belgians, Justine Henin against Kim Clijsters. While Henin leads the head to head, Clijsters has won both their meetings since the second stages of their careers got underway. This will be their first meeting in a slam since they both came back. This one's one of the toughest to call.

The second meeting between Grand Slam winners is Novak Djokovic against Lleyton Hewitt, which is another big match-up for both players. Despite staying at number three in the world, Djoker has not really been a big factor on tour lately. He is probably the third pick to make it through his quarter, since Roddick was a finalist here last year and Hewitt just got the biggest win he's had in years at Halle. If Djokovic can stop Hewitt here, he might get more people talking about him like a potential winner of the tourney, again. On the other hand, Hewitt can show people that his fighting spirit is enough to get him through two hip surgeries and years of being an afterthought. Three years ago, Djokovic beat Hewitt at this tournament by winning three tiebreaks out of four sets. This year's match may be just as close.

The last really interesting match, which surprisingly found its way to one of the outside courts, finds Robin Soderling against David Ferrer. Two top ten seeds, one of whom is a recent slam finalist. Soderling is the second player on the men's side who hasn't dropped a set yet, but Ferrer could just do it. Despite how big Soderling hits the ball, Ferrer just might be able to get enough balls back into play to frustrate the Swede, which is what it used to take to beat him - the new incarnation of Soderling might be too steady for that, but I'll be very interested to see how it goes. A definite contrast of styles between these two players.

Also keep an eye on the match between Na Li and Aggie Radwanksa, two top ten seeds on the women's side, but since neither player is expected to make it much further, this match has something of an air of consolation prize about it.

The remaining players have a somewhat easier time of it. Rafa Nadal gets Paul-Henri Mathieu, against whom he has a 9-0 record against. As long as the Spaniard isn't injured, the Frenchman should be dispatched with relatively ease. Venus Williams plays Jarmila Groth, Jankovic plays Zvonareva (which has a slight chance for an upset), Wozniacki plays Kvitova, and Roddick plays Taiwanese player Yen-Hsun Lu. Tomas Berdych should blow through German Daniel Brands as well, for a likely shot at Roger Federer. And JW Tsonga has a very good chance against Julien Benneteau, unless his back is causing him problems.

All of this on a single day? I'm really excited. Either there are going to be some killer upsets, or the match-ups are only going to get bigger as the week goes on. Either way, I'm thrilled.

Wimbledon Day 5

2010-06-25T23:04:00.002-04:00

The amazing drama of this year's Wimbledon continued today, though there were not any especially noteworthy upsets. John Isner lost to Thiemo De Bakker, in a result that surprised absolutely no one. Credit to De Bakker for being able to keep up his solid play in an odd situation, and also to Isner for not retiring for not retiring when it was clear he was unable to produce a competitive match.

On the other hand, Romanian Victor Hanescu, who was playing on the now-famed court 18, caused a different kind of stir when he retired down 3-0 in the fifth set after getting into it with the crowd, and allegedly spitting at some rowdy fans and deliberately faulting away his last service game. I'm not sure exactly what the story is with that, but it's certainly odd.

The only other upset of note was Paul-Henri Mathieu over Mikhail Youzhny, in another five set match. Mathieu got a lucky net cord winner on break point in the fourth set, but before that, Youzhny looked to be on top of the match. Apparently, he couldn't recover from that disappointment and ended up losing the match.

The other top players had relatively little trouble: Federer and Djokovic won their matches with more ease than they had demonstrated yet during these championships. Hewitt beat Gael Monfils in three sets, while Melzer and Roddick won their matches in four. The women made it through with no trouble at all; all eight of the matches that took place today were completed in straight sets, and the only upsets were Henin over Petrova and Zonvareva over Wickmayer.

Looking ahead to tomorrow's action, it looks like the first Saturday might actually be fairly straight forward. It's tough to see any big upsets in the cards when you have Nadal facing Petzschner, Murray facing Simon, Soderling facing Bellucci, Tsonga facing Kamke, and Querrey facing Malisse. Querrey is probably in the most danger of the top players, while the more interesting matches feature lower-ranked players. Fognini plays Benneteau and Mathieu plays De Bakker, which could each go either way. Ferrer v. Chardy could actually be the closest match on offer tomorrow, but just because of the surface.

Still, I anticipate relatively easy wins for the higher-ranked players in most if not all of these matches, which will set us up for some stunning fourth round contests on Wimbledon's super monday.

On the women's side, the story is much the same. The higher-ranked players need to get through their matches tomorrow, which do not promise a great deal of drama, to set up the good match-ups on Monday. I expect Serena, Wozniacki, Radwanska, Sharapova, Pennetta, Li Na, and Azarenka to win tomorrow - or at least most of them. While there will probably be an upset or two, no single match looks particularly ripe for one.

We'll wrap the most amazing first week of a grand slam in recent memory, and then see how things proceed in the second.

Wimbledon Day 4

2010-06-25T02:31:00.003-04:00

Despite the fact that today marked the Queen of England's first visit to Wimbledon in 33 years, the story of the day was the conclusion of the epic match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut. It was a thrilling spectacle, and has gotten a lot of media attention from all over the world - this was so out of the ordinary, so out of what had been considered the realm of the possible, that it got the attention of people who don't even think about tennis. I was impressed both with the two players amazing physical conditioning and mental constitutions, but I was also impressed by the fact that the match was won by Isner, not lost by Mahut. In that last game, Isner earned his break chance with a spectacular forehand winner, and cracked a backhand pass down the line to seal the match. I hope his body isn't completely wrecked, because he earned more than a first-round win today.

It's tough to imagine, but there was actually a lot of other stuff going on around the grounds today. Rafael Nadal met a stern test from young Robin Haase, who managed to play two spectacular sets, but couldn't keep up that level of play. Still, if Haase can reproduce the form he generated to take two sets off the world number one, there's no reason not to expect his ranking will rise dramatically.

Dolgopolov is another young, relatively unknown player who tested one of the top dogs. JW Tsonga managed to win 10-8 in the fifth, which would be impressive if it had occurred on a different day. I expect that we'll be seeing more of the 21-year old Ukrainian as well. So, no upsets in those two matches, but sneak previews of a couple players with potentially very bright futures.

In other action, Svetlana Kuznetsova continued her dramatic slide by losing in three sets to Anastasia Rodionova. And top doubles team Nestor and Zimonjic barely escaped against British duo Murray/Marray (love the pairing) by winning 15-13 in the fifth. Again, if it had happened on any other day... with so many of the top contenders struggling, and all the crazy matches and comebacks that have taken place, it's easy to say that this is the most exciting first week at Wimbledon in a long time.

We'll see if the streak can continue tomorrow, and the schedule of play is appetizing, I have to say. As third round action begins, we start to see the first seeds clashing, when both of them have made it this far.

Justine Henin plays Nadia Petrova, which could be tough - even though Justine has a 13-2 record against the Russian, including a straight sets win earlier this year at the Australian Open. And Kim Clijsters plays Maria Kirilenko, and Kim is 2-0, so those players are somewhat less familiar with each other's games. Jankovic and Bondarenko play each other, and Venus and Kleybanova. Jankovic has dominated Bondarenko, but Venus and Kleybanova are 1-1. That's some pretty great action for the third round of a grand slam.

And things only get better on the men's side. Hewitt plays Monfils in a match that should feature a ton of running. Hewitt is certainly in the better form and has a vastly superior grass court record, but Monfils leads the head-to-head 2-1. I think I give Hewitt the edge here based on recent performance, but Monfils likes the big stage, and if he can make a couple of crazy shots - and Hewitt will make him try them - then that will fire him up and could get him over the finish line.

And then Roger Federer plays Arnaud Clement, who has won three matches against Federer, but none since 2001. And though Clement made the quarterfinals here two years ago, he's on the wrong side of 30 and it's tough to see him really challenging Federer. On the other hand, Fed's form has not been great thus far, and the thing that seems to give him the most trouble is when a player gets a lot of his balls back in play, which is something that Clement can do. If Federer has to hit too shots, the chances of him shanking go up dramatically. Clement may win a set, but Federer comes through here.

Andy Roddick plays German Phillipp Kohlschreiber. Despite the fact that Roddick leads the head to head 2-1, Kohls won their latest meeting, in a tight five-set match at the 2008 Australian Open. Roddick lost that one by being too passive and waiting for his opponent to break down, a mistake which Roddick has learned to avoid more often than not since then. Roddick knows that his opponent can be dangerous, so he'll be looking to take the game to the German, and Kohlschreiber should be more tired than Roddick, needing a long five-set match to best his last opponent, Teimuraz Gabashvili. I like Roddick in this one.

There are other great players in action - Youzhny against Mathieu, Berdych against Istomin, and Lopez against Melzer. And of course, John Isner has to play his second round match against Thiemo De Bakker. I wonder if we're going to get another day as exciting as we've had in three of the last four, or if we're going to get a relatively humdrum and straightforward day of tennis. In some ways, I could almost use the break.

Wimbledon Day 3

2010-06-23T22:59:00.003-04:00

In the third day of action at Wimbledon, there was only one story that really mattered: the colossal, stupendous, unbelievable fifth set between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut. It has, by itself, gone on longer than any entire match in Wimbledon history, eclipsing - nay, shattering - dozens of records in the process, and getting so far away from them that it is almost a certainty that these new records will never be surpassed so long as tennis continues to be played.

It's difficult to come up with enough superlatives to describe this match, and it's not even over. Tied at 59-all in the fifth set, the match was suspended on account of darkness for the second time, something which has certainly never happened before without inclement weather being involved. Both players have demolished the record for aces served in a match, with both players on the verge of breaking triple-digits. It's really stunning, and a testament both to the mental fortitude and physical exertion that this sport requires.

For the last forty games or so, Isner looked exhausted. Even though he's fit, he's also a much bigger guy than Mahut is, so continuing to move is tougher for him. But despite not moving his feet and barely even seeming able to walk across the court, Isner kept demolishing serves and blasting forehands, no matter how physically spent he was. Mahut was the fresher player, but there's a reason he's ranked outside the top hundred. It'll be fascinating to see what happens tomorrow - how sore the players are, what their strategies are going to be. Isner has the advantage, serving first. With the break to rest up, I think he'll pull out the win, but in a way, it doesn't matter, because whoever comes out on top will be spent for their next match.

In other, far less interesting news, Davydenko lost to German Daniel Brands. That was the biggest upset of the day, and one of the only results not on court 18 worth talking about. Melanie Oudin and Mardy Fish also lost, so despite Isner's tremendous effort, it was not a great day for Americans. Fish was talking like James Blake after the match, as well. Seemingly aware of the fact that his best days are behind him, he said it was disappointing to have never reached the second week at Wimbledon. And while he is right, I think he still has a shot - albeit an outside one - in the next couple of years.

The best performance by an American came from Andy Roddick, who started the match against Michael Llodra getting brutalized by the Frenchman's big serving and clever net play. But Llodra couldn't keep up his level, and Roddick snuck out the second set, ran away with the third, and dominated the tiebreak in the fourth. It was a smart, strong, and savvy performance from last year's finalist. He also got a bit of a break when his next opponent was decided by a long, brutal slugfest (though those words may have lost some meaning thanks to Isner and Mahut) between Gabashvili and Kohlschreiber. Gabashvili was the more potentially dangerous foe, and he lost 9-7 to the German. Despite a loss to Kohls at the Aussie Open a few years ago, Roddick should be handle what he has to offer.

Tomorrow, there will be some tennis taking place other than the match between Isner and Mahut, shockingly. Murray faces Jarkko Nieminen on center court, likely to be in front of the queen. Nadal and Robin Haase will play third, with the surprising choice of Wozniacki and Chang in the middle. Okay, but you do know that defending champ Serena Williams is playing tomorrow too, right? Oh, she's on court 2. Okay. I won't speculate further on the reasoning behind that decision, because scheduling is very difficult, but it does strike me as odd.

Court 1 should feature a bevy of aces, as Maria Sharapova, Robin Soderling, and Sam Querrey are all in action. I expect all three to get through their matches. There are other good players in action tomorrow - Tsonga, Ferrer, Kuznetsova, Azarenka... but there don't appear to be many obviously exciting match-ups. Of course, that doesn't mean it won't be great tennis, but it's hard for me to get really pumped for Martin Fischer v. Tomaz Bellucci or Xavier Malisse v. Julien Reister. The top half of the men's draw and the bottom half of the women's draw seems to be a lot more exciting, if not necessarily stronger.

What could possibly follow up the spectacle of Day 3 at Wimbledon 2010? Can Isner and Mahut ever finish their match? What other surprises will the day bring?

Wimbledon Day 2

2010-06-23T01:49:00.003-04:00

Okay, that's how we were expecting the first round at Wimbledon to go. The second day of action at SW19 proceeded in a fashion much more in tune with what one what expect. The top seeds breezed through, almost entirely untroubled. Nothing like that the top seeds had to struggle through on day one. The toughest match for one of the top players was JW Tsonga's victory over Robbie Kendrick, which took four sets and two tiebreaks. But Nadal, Murray, Soderling, and Ferrer all made it through in straight sets, all of which were pretty routine. The same could be said for the players on the women's side, with one exception.

The only upsets of note were the defeat of Juan Carlos Ferrero by Xavier Malisse, Nicolas Almagro's loss to Andreas Seppi, and Marcos Baghdatis's loss to Lukas Lacko. All three could have made deep runs here, but they weren't among the favorites. The biggest upset took place on the women's side, where French Open finalist Sam Stosur, who went down pretty tamely to Estonian Kaia Kanepi. I really though that Sam was poised for a deep run here, what with her excellent net-play. Oh well, maybe next year.

The other interesting match was James Blake's loss to Robin Haase. Despite the fact that it was only Blake's second match back after an extended injury layoff, Blake was extremely unhappy after the loss. He was clearly still troubled with some pain in his knee, and that left him antsy on court. His focus was all over the place, and his cause was not helped by being able to hear Pam Shriver announcing from the sidelines. That was quite an unusual confrontation, the way Blake yelled at her in between points. I really hope to see Blake come back and play close to the level he's capable of, but if he's not physically capable, then I don't want him to cause himself any more pain. Still, I do hope he makes a recovery. It's still too soon to make any definitive call about his future, especially considering his mumblings about retirement were made in the heat of the moment, after a frustrating loss.

Looking ahead to tomorrow, there are a handful of matches that promise to give us some of the excitement that today's action lacked. First of all, there are three matches entering their final set that are to be completed tomorrow after being suspended due to darkness. Thiemo De Bakker and Santiago Giraldo are just going to start the fifth set, while Daniela Hantuchova and Vania King are entering the third. But the tightest match has been between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut. Both are good on grass, and that should be an interesting fifth set.

In addition, Andy Roddick plays last week's Eastbourne titlist Michael Llodra, who is now being coached by Amelie Mauresmo. As an aside, that's the only instance I know of a male player having a female coach. The other titlist from last week, Sergiy Stakhovsky, was forced to retire down two sets to Sam Querrey, so it will be interesting to see how Llodra fares against last year's finalist. This is by no means a gimme for Roddick, as Llodra is a very talented grass-court player. It should be an interesting match.

Djokovic, who was very troubled by Olivier Rochus, could also have some problems with his next opponent, American serve-and-volleyer Taylor Dent. The American will have to play better than he did in his opening round, but if he can serve well and volley well, then Djokovic will also have to up the level of his game. Djoker might also prefer a big hitter from the service line and a target at night like Dent, as opposed to a speedy little slice-and-dicer like Rochus, so maybe he won't have as much trouble. We'll see what kind of form he's in.

I am also looking forward to Hewitt-Korolev, Berdych-Becker, Clement-Luczak, and Troicki-Melzer. One last match to watch is Kohlschreiber-Gabashvili, since the winner of that match might get Andy Roddick on Friday. Federer should have a much easier time tomorrow than he did on Monday - his opponent is a Serbian who has never even been ranked inside the top hundred. If Fed doesn't absolutely cruise through this match, then we'll know that he's really feeling off, and the rough fight with Alejandro Falla wasn't just a fluke. But based on that performance, it's tough to see Federer defending his title. I expect that the Fed we all remember will be back tomorrow.

Wimbledon Day 1

2010-06-22T00:38:00.002-04:00

That was a pretty exciting first day. Four of the sixteen men's seeds in action lost today, and one women's seed. The seed who lost on the women's side was a bit of a surprise though, as it was French Open champion Francesca Schiavone. She went down fairly tamely to Vera Dushevina, but really - Schiavone's effort to win the French was so monumental that it's not too much of a surprise to see her stumble in the next big tournament.

The men's seeds who lost today didn't include any grand slam champions, but there were still some very good players. Tommy Robredo, who has been struggling in the past few months, fell to Australian veteran Peter Luczak, who got his first ever win at WImbledon. Stan Wawrinka lost to Denis Istomin, and even though grass isn't his favorite surface, I expected him to make it further. Ljubicic has been struggling with injury, so his loss isn't too terribly surprising. But the highest-ranked player to lose - and really, the most surprising - was Marin Cilic's straight sets defeat to Florian Mayer. Cilic should do well on the grass court, but this clearly won't be his year.

The losses weren't anywhere near as exciting as the near-losses. Of the four top ten seeds in action today, only one of the players made smooth progress. Andy Roddick had no trouble against Rajeev Ram, winning without even facing a break point. On the other hand, Nikolay Davydenko, Novak Djokovic, and even Roger Federer all needed five sets to get through their first-round matches. Any of those three players could have easily lost today, as shocking as that is. Scratchy wins, but they get to play another day. They're going to need to up their level of play to make it further in the tournament, though.

Also of note, Ricardas Berankis, former U.S. Open junior champion, turned 20 today, and got his first Grand Slam win over Aussie Carsten Ball. I think we'll see more of him in the future, along with Bernard Tomic - who played tough, but still lost to Mardy Fish. It's hard to be a 20-year old or younger on the ATP tour these days, with how physical the game has become.

Looking ahead to tomorrow, it's going to be tough to top the first half of the first round. The rest of the field is in action, so we'll get to see how Nadal, Murray, Serena Williams, and Sharapova are looking. There's plenty of appetizing match-ups on offer - watch for Soderling-Ginepri, Nadal-Nishikori, Malisse-Ferrero, Youzhny-Sela, and Ferrer-Kiefer. I predict fewer five-setters and upsets tomorrow than there were today, but it still should be fun to see how these players perform.

Last Minute Wimbledon Women's Preview

2010-06-21T02:20:00.003-04:00

It may only be a few hours before Wimbledon officially gets underway, so let me throw together a quick preview of the women's draw. It's not quite as appetizing a draw as the men's but there are some excellent match-ups down the road.

Serena Williams, the top seed and defending champion, has something of a tricky draw. It's not as littered with landmines as Nadal's, but it's still going to be a challenge. She opens against Portuguese teen Michelle Larcher De Brito, and then gets will probably get Chakvetadze. After that, she may get Safarova, followed by either Hantuchova, or former champion Sharapova. That's an enticing round of 16 match if I've ever seen one. In the quarters, I expect Serena to find either Aggie Radwanska, Na Li, or Svetlana Kuznetsova. Any of those matches could be tough if Serena's having an off-day, but it's tough to see Serena not making it through to the semifinals.

The second quarter is ostensibly Caroline Wozniacki's, but she hasn't been showing the greatest form lately, so it may be that the sixth seed Sam Stosur is actually the favorite. Stosur's net-rushing, serve-and-volley style of play that she honed during her years as a doubles player should serve her well here. This section also has Azarenka, who showed some of her best form of the year in the past week. Watch for Kimiko Date Krumm to upset 31st seed Alexandra Dulgheru in the first round.

The third quarter is probably the toughest, because in addition to having fourth seed Jelena Jankovic, it also has Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin. One of those three is almost certainly going to make it through to the semis, which is a shame for the other players in this section. Zvonareva and Alona Bondarenko are here, but I don't see them getting through these tougher players. Keep an eye on American teen Alison Riske against Belgian number three (they all ended up in this section) Yanina Wickmayer.

The final quarter of the draw features second-seeded Venus Williams most prominently, of course. But it also has French Open champion Frnacesca Schiavone, former French Open champion Ana Ivanovic, and former Wimbledon finalist Marion Bartoli. It had Dinara Safina, but she pulled out of the tournament, and her spot was filled by Melanie Oudin. It's a pretty exciting quarter - lots of good players, but other than Venus, not really very many serious threats.

I think it's likely that we'll have Venus Williams playing Justine Henin in one semifinal, Seran Williams playing Sam Stosur in the other. As much as I would like Justine to get her title, she's just not in good enough form right now, in my opinion. We may have another Williams-Williams final, just like we have had for the last few years. But that's a ways off, and the women's game is sufficiently topsy-turvy right now, that I wouldn't put a lot of money on that outcome.

For now, there's nothing to do but let the games begin!

Wimbledon Preview

2010-06-19T19:00:00.000-04:00

I'll be quick to dispatch the finals from this week - I was right on two of them. Justine Henin and Michael Llodra each won, while Tipsarevic and Azarenka weren't so lucky. Still, props to every player who made the finals this week, which will hopefully help them build momentum on the way into the biggest tournament of the year.

Looking at the Wimbledon draw, I have to say - even though the players are mostly the same as were present at the French Open, this field seems to be packed with a lot more exciting match-ups. It could be because fewer players have as much trouble on grass as they do on clay, but it could just be that this is a more appetizing draw. I'll look at the draw in eight sections, rather than by quarter, because otherwise I'd be doing too much analysis in each batch.

Federer's section of the draw doesn't appear to be too problematic. He opens against Alejandro Falla, who is 0-4 against Federer, including two losses already this year and another loss at Wimbledon way back in 2004. That's a pretty safe first round. He'll probably get Nicolas Massu in the second, who has only beaten Federer once, and it was eight years ago. Things may get a bit more interesting in the third round, however. I expect that Tommy Robredo - the player that Federer is seeded to meet at that point - won't make it that far, because he has some tough opposition and has been struggling recently. In his place, Fed might find either Janko Tipsarevic or Arnaud Clement, two players who have played Federer tough in the past and who both love Wimbledon. I'd love to see a rematch of the Fed-Tipsy epic from the Australian Open in 2008, personally. In the round of 16, Federer's opponent will probably be either the grass-court-loving Spaniard Feliciano Lopez or French Open semifinalist Jurgen Melzer, but there's an outside chance that Carsten Ball could make a run. Also in this section, watch for Lithuanian teen Ricardas Bernankis, who won't make it far but should be fun to look for in the future. In the end, there's not a lot of people who could trouble Federer on his way to the quarters, and I see him getting through.

Luckily for Federer, the other top 8 seed in his quarter is Nikolay Davydenko, who both hates playing on grass at Wimbledon and has just come off an injury. It will be quite a feat for him to make it deep in this tournament. He opens against the big, 6'8" South African Kevin Anderson, and that may be all she wrote for Davydenko. Even if he gets past Anderson, he'll face big-hitting countryman Igor Andreev. The other seed that Davydenko would run into first is another player who doesn't love grass courts, Victor Hanescu. While neither of them may make it to the quarters or even the round of 16, the opponent they would find there will be a tough one. That section of the draw has Tomas Berdych and Stanislas Wawrinka as the top seeds, which is a tough pairing. Their section also has Rainer Schuettler and Benjamin Becker, so whoever comes through there will probably find themselves facing Federer in the quarters. I give Berdych a chance at beating Fed there, but he's the only guy with a real shot.

Novak Djokovic, the third seed, doesn't really have his own quarter. He's found himself in Andy Roddick's quarter. But he still has his own section, and it's a brutal one. He opens against Olivier Rochus, who beat him earlier in the year, and then will probably get Taylor Dent in the second round. Dent loves the grass court season, and he'll be a tough opponent for Novak. Djokovic could get a break in the third round, because Albert Montanes does not love the grass courts at Wimbledon, but in the fourth round, he'll probably get either Lleyton Hewitt or Gael Monfils, and that's just brutal. It's tough to see Djokovic making it out of that section of the draw - in fact, I'd put Hewitt as the favorite to reach the quarterfinals, especially considering his recent win over Federer.

And they're all playing for the chance to - in all likelihood - face last year's finalist Andy Roddick. Roddick could face some stern opposition, but this is - after the U.S. Open - the American's backyard, and grass is - as coach Stefanki said - his "bread and butter." After an essentially inconsequential opening round against Rajeev Ram, Roddick could get recent Eastbourne titlist Michael Llodra in the second round. I think the fact that Llodra is thirty and just won a title a few days ago will make it tough for him to bounce back and face the big-serving American. After that, Roddick will probably get either Kohlschreiber, who beat him at the Australian Open in 2007, or Gabashvili, who just beat him at the French. But I think Roddick is the better player on this surface, and should actually be motivated because he knows these are dangerous guys. He's much more in danger of falling to somebody coming out of nowhere, in my opinion. In the round of sixteen, there are a couple people he could face - Marin Cilic is the seeded player, and Cilic beat an injured Roddick at the Aussie Open this year. But he has to get past Mardy Fish, who has been playing good tennis in recent weeks. The other player to watch here is Ljubicic, who beat Roddick earlier in the year as well, but has been struggling with injury. As a final note, Fish opens against Bernard Tomic, who has a great future ahead of him, but this isn't his tournament.

With all that said, I see Roddick making it through to a rematch with Federer in the semis. Which is what everyone wants anyway.

Moving along to the bottom half of the draw, Fernando Verdasco has his own section as the eighth seed, and while he has a good draw through to the round of sixteen, it does get a lot tougher. He opens against Italian Fabio Fognini and then might get American Michael Russel. His third round opponent could be 32nd seed Julien Benneteau, or one of three other not terribly dangerous opponents. But in the fourth round, he's likely to meet either tenth seed JW Tsonga or big-hitting Spaniard Nicolas Almagro, both of whom represent a dramatic rise in the quality of opponent he would be facing. There's also an outside chance he could meet slumping Swiss #3 Marco Chiudinelli, if he goes on a tear. I think that Verdasco, Tsonga, and Almagro are just about all equally likely to make it out of this section of the draw and into the quarters.

Once they get there, they're almost certain to face Andy Murray. While Roddick may have treated Wimbledon as his own backyard, it really and truly is for Murray. He'll need the support of his countrymen to turn his year around, as he's entering the tournament this year with a significantly worse record than he was last year at this point. While his draw is by no means easy, it could have been a lot worse. He'll probably get Finnish player Jarkko Nieminen in the second round, followed by Frenchman Gilles Simon. Both players are runners and returners, so they play the same style as Murray, just not as well. In his round of 16 match, on the other hand, he might find himself facing Sam Querrey, which is a very different sort of game. If Querrey can get through his first round against Unicef Open titlist Stakhovsky, then I expect that he'll get through his second round opponent and Juan Carlos Ferrero for a meeting with Andy Murray. That should be fun to watch - Querrey just won at Queen's and is desperate for a deep run at a major. This is a good chance for him, but he'll need Murray to be troubled by the pressure.

Even if Murray makes it by Querrey and finds Tsonga, Verdasco, or Almagro in the quarters, they're exactly the sort of player that gives Murray trouble. It would be a tough one for him to get through. It's by no means a guarantee that he'll equal his run to the semifinals from last year.

The final quarter of the draw is pretty much mouth-watering, I have to say. It's a brutal, brutal section. First, Robin Soderling is the sixth seed. He opens against resurgent Robbie Ginepri, and could get Tomaz Bellucci in the third round, after Portuguese Frederico Gil. In the fourth round, he could get Marcos Baghdatis, Jeremy Chardy, David Ferrer, or wildcard Nicolas Kiefer, all tough opponents on this surface. But I think that Soderling should make it through - it does work to his disadvantage that he made the final at the French Open, because he withdrew from any of the grass court warm-up events in the intervening weeks, and he'll need to adjust quickly to the change in the surface.

The bottom part of this quarter belongs to Rafael Nadal, and even though he's considering one of the top two favorites to win the tournament, he'll have to get through an absolutely devastating field to do it. I don't know the last time I saw a player with this cruel a draw. He opens against Kei Nishikori, who hasn't done much this year but is a player with a ton of potential. After that, he could get recently-recovered James Blake, a big-hitting player who's beaten Nadal in a Grand Slam match before. And then maybe Ernests Gulbis, who nearly beat him on clay earlier in the year. And then maybe Isner, who should love the way the grass responds to his serve or Mikhail Youzhny, who beat Nadal at the U.S. Open in 2006. That is an unbelievably tough draw - if those are the players he has to face, followed by Soderling (who can forget their Wimbledon match from a few years ago?), Murray, and Federer/Roddick, then I think I can say that it would be the toughest road to a title that we've seen in a long time.

While there are some really thrilling matches promised down the road, there are also some really fascinating opening rounds, and quite a few feature relatively high seeds that I would say could be in danger. There's also quite a few young, unproven players who have a chance to make some noise. It's worth noting that only three players have made the Wimbledon final since 2004: Nadal, Federer, and Roddick. Also, the last three finals have all been five sets, which I believe is the first time that has happened since 1970-72. It would be great to be able to keep up that level of excitement, but it's still two weeks away. I can't wait!

I'll take a (briefer) look at women's draw tomorrow.

Week 24 Finals

2010-06-19T02:53:00.004-04:00

The finals for the last tournament before Wimbledon have been set, and to be honest, they're not really that exciting. The players who wanted to get ready for Wimbledon seem to have already left - the four players remaining in Eastbourne and the Netherlands are not what you would call favorites at next week's grand slam, though they are interesting matches, in their own way.

In s'Hertogenbosch, Sergiy Stakhovsky beat Xavier Malisse for a spot in the final, where he'll face Serbian Janko Tipsarevic, after he got a hard-fought win over Benjamin Becker in the semis. Stakhovsky has won two titles already in his career, and despite that Tipsarevic is the more accomplished player generally, he has yet to win his maiden title. It would be a huge win for Janko, and I have to admit I hope he gets it. He's one of my favorite players to watch, when he's on his game, and it's surprising to me that he hasn't been able to put an entire good week together to win a tournament. Stakhovsky won their only meeting at the tour-level, but Tipsarevic beat the Ukrainian, more recently, in the final of a challenger event. It should be an interesting match.

In Eastbourne, Spaniard Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, who has a 14-11 match record on grass heading into this tournament, faces former champion Michael Llodra. It's been qutie a run for Garcia-Lopez, who is definitely a clay-court player, while Llodra has done well on grass in the past. I have to think that this is Llodra's match to win or lose. His style of play is much better situated to the conditions on court.

On the women's side, the two likely winners in the finals are facing relatively mid-level competition. Victoria Azarenka, who has not had a great year, notched up some pretty good wins - Radwanska, Clijsters, and Bartoli - on her way to the final, where she faces the Ekaterina Makarova, who is like Tipsarevic in that she is aiming for her first title. I expect Azarenka to take the title, though, as she is definitely the more accomplished player, recent form notwithstanding.

The other final may prove to be similarly one-sided. Justine Henin has not even dropped a set or been taken to a tiebreak by any of her opponents thus far, and even though Petkovic is her sternest challenge yet, it would be a surprise to me if Justine could lose this match. The bigger worry is getting to London and getting adjusted to Wimbledon in time for her opening round match, at this point. We'll see how that goes.

Week 24 Quarterfinals

2010-06-17T01:11:00.003-04:00

The seeds have not fared particularly well, through the middle of the week in the two grass-court tournaments taking place. At the Unicef Open in the Netherlands, only two of the starting eight seeds are remaining: Boris Becker and Janko Tipsarevic. Now that's something of an unexpected pairing to be remaining, out of the seeds that started the tournament. They're join in the last eight by a bunch of middle-of-the-pack tour veterans, as well as Belgian Xavier Malisse, who is trying to work on his career resurgence. I have to think that Malisse are Becker are the favorites to meet in the final, at this point, but since any player who makes a deep run this week will be at a disadvantage going into Wimbledon, it's hard to predict what's going to happen.

In Eastbourne, the seeds have fared moderately better. While top seeds Lopez and Almagro are out, the only other seed to lose thus far is clay-court specialist Horacio Zeballos. Frenchman Gilles Simon has had to fight through some tough matches to get to the quarterfinals, playing three tiebreaks in six sets, but it's good to get some match practice after missing most of the year with injury. The other exciting story is British wildcard James Ward, who has beaten two players with a history of grass-court accomplishment: Feliciano Lopez and Rainer Schuettler. Here's hoping he can win another couple matches this week. It's good for the hometown crowds.

On the women's side, there are some interesting match-ups on the way. Kim Clijsters is playing Victoria Azarenka, which is a pretty appetizing quarterfinal match-up, I have to say. The other top players remaining in Eastbourne are Stosur, Kuznetsova, and Bartoli. Pretty good draw to make it that far. In the Netherlands, on the other hand, Justine Henin is still pretty much the only force left in the draw. It'll be a disappointment if she doesn't make it through the draw - unless, of course, she wants to rest up a few more days before Wimbledon.

The Wimbledon qualifying tournament has gotten to the final round, with a couple really surprising upsets. Americans Donald Young and Ryan Harrison, who I thought really should made it to the main draw, toppled early. Josselin Ouanna also lost, which was a disappointment for me, since he's fun to watch. The most exciting - and gut-wrenching - match thus far was Nicolas Mahut over British Alex Bogdanovic, 24-22 in the third set. Oof, that lack of a last-set tiebreaker is a killer. Mahut's reward is former Grand Slam quarterfinalist Stefan Koubek.

Other interesting match-ups for the chance at entry into the main draw are Go Soeda against Jesse Witten, as well as another pair of Americans, Robert Kendrick against Ryan Sweeting. Bernard Tomic plays Prakash Amritaj, which is another interesting pairing. And my favorite pairing is Gilles Muller against Carsten Ball, who should adapt well to the grass, with the way he plays. I also hope that top seeded Taylor Dent makes it through, because he should love the surface, with his serve-and-volley style of play.

Week 23 Wrap-up and Week 24 Preview

2010-06-14T02:53:00.003-04:00

Well, that was a surprise. The two finals which took place yesterday ended up going exactly the opposite way I would have expected. The match between Fish and Querrey, while a fairly tight match, ended up with a convincing win for Querrey, while Federer somehow managed to lose to Hewitt in a tough three-setter.

The match between Fish and Querrey was dominated by serve, but it looked like the veteran had the stronger start. He started the match with 0-40 in Querrey's first service game. Unfortunately, after Querrey served his way out of that problem, then Fish didn't get another break point chance. The set went to a tiebreak, where Sam dominated. In the second set, Fish looked like he might turn the match around. He broke Querrey and served for the set at 5-4, but unfortunately couldn't keep it together and lost the next three games.

This is about par for both players, as Fish drops to a miserable 3-11 in tournament finals, while Querrey wins his third title of the year, and on three different surfaces no less. Unfortunately, Querrey doesn't have a lot to gain, ranking-wise, from winning more of these 250-level tournaments. He needs to make some noise at the masters and grand slams in order to move any further up the rankings. Fish, on the other hand, gained a great deal from his final appearance, and while he's only up to 70 in the world, that is an increase of 20 places from where he was last week. A good result from both players.

The Federer-Hewitt match, on the other hand, was somewhat bizarre. Federer looked to be cruising, up a set, and having come back from a break down already in the second, he had break points on Hewitt's serve at 4-all, which would have essentially sealed the deal. But after Hewitt saved those, he somehow managed to pull out the tiebreak and then break Federer at the start of the third set. At that point, Federer's game started getting sloppy, as he began hitting more errors and outright shanking a few balls. Hewitt held serve through to the end, and notched his first win against Federer in his last 15 tries, and Federer got only his second loss on grass in his last 77 matches on the surface. Really stunning stuff, and it's tough to imagine that Federer is going to be very confident heading into Wimbledon, considering that he hasn't won a title this year since the Australian Open.

Looking ahead to the two tournaments on offer this week - the week before a slam is always interesting, because the top players generally take the week off to rest up for the coming tournament, but the players who are just outside the top 100 need to qualifying to get into the slam, so you get a bunch of players mostly outside the top 20 but inside the top 100 competing. It can lead to some interesting match-ups.

This is particularly true due to several players who are coming off long lay-offs to resume play this week. In Eastbourne, James Blake opens against Julien Benneteau and Gilles Simon opens against Evgeny Korolev. Also look for the opening-round match between qualifiers Nishikori and Kuznetsov, who could get Simon in the second round. Almagro is the top seed here, and he should do well, despite having an atrocious 3-6 career record on grass. Also be on the lookout for Dudi Sela and Feliciano Lopez, who had big wins last week at Queens.

Also in Eastbourne, Kim Clijsters is back in action, as well as Caroline Wozniacki, French Open champ Francesca Schiavone, Li Na - who had a great win yesterday over Maria Sharapova in the final at Birmingham - and even slumping Svetlana Kuznetsova got a wildcard into the tourney. In one of the best opening rounds, Sam Stosur opens against Melanie Oudin, who's having a bit of a sophomore slump this year. That's a pretty impressive draw, I have to say. The top eight seeds are from the top 12 players in the world! After how barren last week's draw was, that is amazing.

The other tournament going on this week is in s'Hertogenbosch, in the Netherlands, but I'm just going to refer to it as the Unicef Open in the tags, because I'll never spell that right again. The draw here isn't quite as stacked on either side, but it still has some great players. Ljubicic is the top seed on the men's side, and he'll have to watch out for Marcos Baghdatis and Tommy Robredo. Chardy and Clement are floating there in the draw, as are Malisse and Becker. It could develop into a good tournament too, depending on how the first couple rounds go.

On the women's side, it's all about one person: top seeded Justine Henin, who is aching to win Wimbledon this year and needs this warm-up tournament to get her into a grass-court mentality. She shouldn't have too much trouble with this event, though, as second seeded Dinara Safina has - regrettably - already lost in the first round. Other than that, Ivanovic is in the dra, and a lot of very strong but not especially accomplished players. Henin couldn't have asked for much more to get her in the right frame of mind for a big run at Wimbledon.

In a day or two, I'll take a look at the qualifying draws for Wimbledon, which have some exciting match-ups of their own. Enjoy the tennis!

Week 23 Final

2010-06-13T00:53:00.002-04:00

For an off-week, the pair of finals that we have on offer tomorrow promise some fairly exciting tennis. In a stacked field at Queen's club, the surprising All-American final features Sam Querrey against Mardy Fish. It should be a good match, as both are big servers and competent volleyers. On the one hand, I hope that Fish comes out on top - Querrey already has a couple of titles this year, and doesn't stand to gain that much (in terms of ranking) if he lifts the trophy. Fish, on the other hand, could go up about 40 places next week.

The other final has the bigger names, but the conclusion is probably already decided. Hewitt has lost the last 15 against Federer, and Federer hasn't lost in Halle in more than half a decade. It should be a fun match, but it's hard to imagine Rusty pulling out a victory.

There's not much else to say about these match-ups, I'm sorry to say. They should feature some fun tennis, but they don't have a lot of resonance for the bigger picture of the tennis season. I'll still be watching, though!

Week 23 Semifinals

2010-06-12T01:37:00.003-04:00

While the upsets continue in London, the bleeding seems to have finally ended in Halle, as Federer and Hewitt have moved through to the semifinals with little difficulty. They'll face a pair of Germans for the chance to meet in the final - Petzschner and Becker, who really don't have much realistic expectation of staging an upset, either one. Hewitt and Federer are two of the last three people to win Wimbledon, and it would be perfect to see them facing off in the final of a grass-court warm-up event. I'm sure the organizers would like to see that take place, as well. But there's one more round to go before that happens...

In Queen's, like I said, the upset bug is back. Murray ended up losing to Fish when the match resumed, going down in a third set tiebreak. Fish then came back and beat Michael Llodra later in the day. Very impressive display from the American, who started the year strong but stumbled during the clay season. He'll be glad to be back in a semifinal, and rather than facing Rafael Nadal, he'll get another Spaniard - Feliciano Lopez! F-Lo managed the biggest upset in a week of upsets by beating Nadal, who was on a 24-match win streak and a huge winning streak on grass as well! Big win for Lopez, who has twice been a Wimbledon quarterfinalist. Unlike most Spaniards, I believe that grass is his favorite surface. Not the best way for Nadal to start off his new reign as world number one, but still - very impressive.

The other half of the draw is just about as surprising. Dudi Sela couldn't follow up his win over Andy Roddick and lost to Rainer Schuettler. The veteran German gets American Sam Querry in the semis, as Querrey ousted Xavier Malisse, who toppled Novak Djokovic. Anybody who picked Querrey and Fish into the semifinals here without having Roddick make it that far deserves to win their pool. It seems very likely at this point that we'll have at least one American in the final, and there's not a bad chance of having two.

Put that together with Blake coming back into action next week, and you might even forget how perilously close we are to not having an American in the top ten for the first time in who knows how long. In any case, it's a good weekend of tennis, in Halle and in London.