Week 5, Mid-week Summary

With the first week of post-Australian Open action about halfway done, there have been a few results of note. Nothing too shocking, but a few surprises. Before we get to the analysis, it's worth mentioning that the most important result of Nadal's inability to defend his title at the Australian Open was his ranking dropping from #2 to #4. He hasn't been ranked lower than #2 since July of 2005. He displaced Lleyton Hewitt in that spot.

I don't know if we've heard the last of Nadal's injury. He has a lot of points to defend in the near future. He won Indian Wells, Monte Carlo, and Rome last year, while he made the finals in Madrid. He also won Barcelona and made the Rotterdam final. That's 4,400 of Nadal's 7,600 points, coming up in the next three months before the French Open. Of course, if he can get his title back there, it will help his ranking considerably. But if he's not fighting fit, he could slide a long ways down the rankings in the months to come.

Djokovic moves up to number 2 for the first time in his career, but not because of any stellar performance on his part. He has to be happy to be at his all-time best ranking, but it would have been better if he'd gotten there by winning, rather than by Nadal's form dropping.

Anyway, on to this week's action. In Johannesburg, there are some quite matches coming up. Top-seed Gael Monfils will play his countryman Josselin Ouanna in the second round, and I picked Ouanna as a player on the rise this year. We'll see how well he can do against the number two French player. Ouanna is the #14 Frenchman, which is saying something since he's still ranked 121st in the world.

Dustin Brown, the greatest-ever Jamaican tennis player, finds himself in the quarterfinals with a winnable match against Frenchman Stephane Robert. Brown has a great attitude and a fun style of play. He does what everyone says all those tall players should do - he serves at volleys! He's surprisingly quick to net for a player who is 6'5". You can read more about him here.

The other notable upset at the SA Tennis Open is Indian number one Somdev Devvarman over Xavier Malisse, who has yet to do much with his overturned substance abuse policy ban. He hasn't won an ATP-level match since beating Rik De Voest at Queen's club, last year.

The pending match-ups at Santiago and Zagreb are not quite as interesting, from my perspective. But there's still potential! In Zagreb, Cilic and Koellerer are playing each other in the second round, and if there's anybody ranked outside the top twenty who I wouldn't want to see when I was exhausted after making my first grand slam final, it would probably be Daniel "Crazycakes" Koellerer. Berrer also beat Tipsarevic in the first round, but Tipsy is a very hot-and-cold player, while Berrer just came off a challenger win last week.

In Santiago, it doesn't look like anyone is planning to stand in the way of Gonzalez winning the tournament again. When he retires, they should just name this the "Fernando Gonzalez Open."