Asian Swing

The time after the U.S. Open is often disregarded by many tennis fans. Particularly for American fans, the U.S. Open is understood to be the end of any tennis that people are interested in. As it is the final grand slam of the year, the tournaments that follow (even the end-of-year championships) can be a bit anticlimactic for your average tennis fan. As in football (up until this year), the Pro Bowl was always played after the Superbowl, but nobody cared.

While I can see why some tennis fans ignore the Asian swing and the European indoor seasons, they're really missing out. This is often the time for up-and-coming or underachieving players to really make their mark, since the top players can begin to feel worn down by the year-long grind - two years ago, David Nalbandian beat both Federer and Nadal in back-to-back tournaments. Last year, JW Tsonga emerged victorious in his first Masters Series event in Paris. And Murray won Madrid's last Master Series shield.

There has already been some exciting tennis this year, just a week and a half into this part of the year. Tsonga played Ernests Gulbis (ranked just inside the top 100) to three tiebreaks, Monfils broke a four year title drought, and Monaco lost in his third final this year in the last clay court event on the calendar, giving him the most clay court wins of any player on tour this year. Still, no titles.

While this week's Bangkok draw may not be the flashiest (Tsonga, Simon, Isner are the highlights after Safin lost and Querrey withdrew with injury) the quarterfinals in Kuala Lumpur are nothing but fireworks: Davydenko-Monfils, Soderling-Berdych, Youzhny-Gonzalez, and Gasquet-Verdasco. That's the top six seeds, all in the ATP top sixteen, and two former top ten players in Gasquet and Youzhny. Despite not having any of the huge names, that's an incredbily strong draw for a low-level tournament in Malaysia. Mouth-watering, really.

I think the higher-ranked player is the favorite in every one of these matches (with the possible exception of Davydenko-Monfils) but all of them could be close. It's good to Gasquet back on the tournament trail, and Youzhny had a good win over David Ferrer. Any of the players left in the draw could pull out a win in this tournament, not only because of the strength of every player remaining, but also because a fair number of these players have been dealing with some injuries over the course of the year.

I'll try to watch as much of it streaming as I can. We'll see how it goes!