US Open Day 3

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.