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."

Week 1 - Justine Henin's Comeback Underway

The first truly significant event of the 2010 season has occurred, and it went just as most people expected. Justine Henin, after more than 15 months away from professional tennis, didn't look rusty at all in her first match back on tour, against number 2 seed Nadia Petrova. The only part of her game that wasn't quite on was her serve. In the first set, she was serving at only 40%, and she started off worse than that. She ended up at 47% for the match, so she was getting back into her groove. Even though she was missing a lot of first serves, it was very effective when she got it in. She hit six aces and lost only three points off that shot during the entire match.

Petrova did not play poorly, either. She served at 70% with only one double fault, and there were some excellent rallies, but in the end Henin's touch and movement made her just too strong. She'll next face the qualifier Sesil Karatantcheva, whose name you'll be forgiven for not recognizing. Henin shouldn't have any trouble until she reaches the quarters, where she has a chance of facing Ana Ivanovic, who had a good win against Jelena Dokic in the first round. Ivanovic is trying to get back to her top form after a poor 2009, and a deep run in this tournament would get that underway nicely. Both are on the opposite side of the draw from Kim Clijsters, who breezed through her opening round, so that could be a blockbuster final.

The other notable results on the women's side are the wins by two wildcards in Auckland. Thirty-nine year old Kimiko Date Krumm defeated Chakvetadze while giving up only three games. Additionally, Yanina Wickmeyer defeated Julia Goerges in two, having had no apparent ill effects from the doping (well, testing) scandal at the end of last season. Her countryman Xavier Malisse did not fare quite as well, losing in the final round of qualifying in Brisbane.

There were some interesting results from the qualifying rounds, though. American minor-leaguer Ryler DeHeart, who faced Nadal in the U.S. Open in 2008, beat second qualifying seed Karol Beck. He's rewarded with a match against 38-year old Younes el Aynaoui, which is a winnable match. Yuki Bhambri, a spectacular junior champion from 2009, lost in the final round of the quallies in Chennai to the same Irish player who beat Donald Young, Louk Sorenson.

Also in Chennai, Thiemo de Bakker beat Rajeev Ram in a rout, the 21-year old Dutch player winning 6-1, 6-1 against the eighth seed. Winning so easily is impressive, since de Bakker has mostly played on the challenger tour, and has an ATP record of only 9-13. Maybe this will be his breakout year. He'll likely Janko Tipsarevic in the third round, as the Serbian beat former world number one Carlos Moya in the first. Defending champ Marin Cilic also won, and he's in that half of the draw.

In Doha, Ernests Gulbis won his first-round match, and if this year is going to be anything like last year, that means he'll lose in round two. Ivo Karlovic also won his first round against Fabio Fognini, but here's an interesting stat - Dr. Ivo only had seven aces in 10 service games, while Andy Roddick had 15 during his win over Peter Luczak in Brisbane. This may be the only time during the course of the year when the American leads in the ace race.

One last thing to note - the Hopman cup has not gone well for the Americans, with Oudin and Isner losing both their singles matches and their doubles match to the Spaniards. Isner's match with Robredo was a tough one, with two out of the three sets going to tiebreaks, but the big-serving American couldn't quite pull it out, in the end.