US Open 2013

Play at Flushing Meadows is underway.

Not a ton of real drama early on, at least among top seeds. The biggest upset of the day happened right as play began. Kei Nishikori, seeded 11th, was taken out by qualifier Dan Evans of England.

The biggest news of the day was that James Blake has announced that this US Open will be his last tournament.

I tend not to be the type that wants to push athletes out the door as soon as they lose a step or two, but it was time for Blake to go. If nothing else, leaving now gives him a chance to leave on his own terms at his home slam. With all the injury issues he has had, that's not a sure thing if he were to try to play another year.

When you consider that Blake wasn't a hotshot junior player, you would have to say that his career was a huge success. But you also have to consider that it's a bit disappointing that he never won anything of circumstance at a tour event even though he was a consistent top-15 player there for quite a while.

The Roddick, Blake, Fish, Dent group that came in together is just about done at this point. All but Fish are gone and with Fish's health issues, I don't think he will be far behind.

 

That whole "Sugarpova" thing was ridiculous. Honestly, it wouldn't shock me if her camp leaked the Sugarpova story knowing full well that not only would they not go through with it but also knowing that she wasn't going to play in the US Open.

 

Not a good day for lower-seeded players.

A clearly-hobbled (14) Jerzy Janowicz loses in straight sets to qualifier Maximo Gonzalez. He was hurting so badly and struggling with his serve so much late in the third set that he resorted to trying to serve underhanded.

Denis Istomin took out (15) Nicolas Almagro in four sets, although I have to admit that wasn't a huge surprise to me. Istomin had a good US hardcourt swing before the Open and Almagro has been terrible on hardcourts of late.

Joao Sousa beat (25) Grigor Dimitrov in five sets.

More notable to me, a geek when it comes to American tennis, is what the young Americans on court right now are doing.

Donald Young, one of the more notorious Next Big Thing busts in US tennis, just finished polishing off a solid player in Martin Klizan 6-1, 6-0, 6-1. Young played really, really solid match, but it's worth noting that Klizan played what honestly might be the worst match I've ever seen a supposed healthy player play at a Grand Slam. But hey, we'll take it.

Jack Sock, who in my mind is quickly chasing down Ryan Harrison in the young American pecking order, just got finished beating Philipp Petzschner. It was one set apiece with Sock leading 5-2 in the third when Petzschner retired. Sock will take on the qualifier Gonzalez in the second round, so he has a chance to make a little run.

Denis Kudla, a more under-the-radar player, has taken the first two sets from Jiri Vesely.

Both the seeded Americans, Isner and Querrey, won today. Isner looked particularly impressive in getting off the court quickly, which is nice because his upcoming second-round match with Gael Monfils has the chance to be a marathon.

 

Big win for 17-year-old Victoria Duval tonight. She came back from a set down to take out #11 Sam Stosur. Her priceless reaction to each and every crucial point and then her celebration was one of those moments that reminds me why I love sports. The competition among young Americans in the women's game is getting pretty fierce. There are a ton of really solid players (Stephens, Keys, McHale, Hampton, Davis, Riske, Burdette, King and now Duval). It makes someone like Melanie Oudin, who had a lot of success early on and is still relatively young, overlooked.

On another note, Stosur has to have one of the more odd careers of any player on the WTA Tour. She was a pretty dominant doubles player (she was #1 for 61 consecutive weeks at one point). Then, in her mid-20s, she developed into a threat in singles and even won the US Open in 2011. But she still has horrible bouts of inconsistency. She has exited in the first round of a major six times in the last four years. For someone who has been in and around the top ten during that time, that's astounding to me.

 

Stop me if you have heard this before, but play at the US Open has been suspended due to rain.

They really can't get the roof done fast enough.

On a more personal note, I'm actually planning a trip to the US Open next year and I'm paralyzed with fear that rain is going to ravage the tournament while I'm there.

 

Ultimately Blake couldn't overcome Karlovic, as he dropped the match in five tough sets.

Although technically his career isn't over because he is playing doubles with Jack Sock and they play today. But they are taking on the second-ranked doubles team, so it will likely be over after today.

 

Sam Querrey was just dropped his match in four sets to Adrian Mannarino of France.

As he does so often, Sam just looked disinterested as he just got outplayed by the Frenchman. I realize that's just his demeanor and who he is, but it doesn't do anything to silence the critics that think he doesn't really care enough.

 

Maybe I'm nuts, but I still think Donald Young can be a consistent top-40 player. That's certainly disappointing given the level of expectation when he broke in, but it's something.

He just needs to be willing to take coaching and make some changes in his game. Not that I've watched a ton of his matches, but from what I understand, he is more or less the same player he was when he was in his late teens.

Every time he has had a coach that pushes him a little bit, though, he pushes back and goes back to being coached by his parents. His parents are tennis pros, so it's not like they are clueless, but clearly he has gone as far as he can go with them.

 

If you are still up and not watching college football, there is a fun match on between John Isner and Gael Monfils.

Isner won the first two sets and looked like he was going to cruise to victory, but then a funny thing happened. The matches on Arthur Ashe ended, so all those people came and filled in Louis Armstrong, where Isner/Monfils is taking place. Monfils, ever the showman, fed off the raised energy level and fought back to break Isner and win the third set.

As it was becoming apparent that Monfils had woken up and would soon be doing Monfils things, the crowd actually got behind him in that third set, which is weird considering you would assume they would be rooting for the American.

The ESPN announcers, particularly Chris Fowler, seem surprised and possibly disgusted by that. You can also kind of feel that there is some tension in the crowd because of it. Some guy even yelled out something about "killing the Frenchie" during a changeover. Thankfully, the crowd booed him for that comment. Crazy stuff, but fun to watch.

 

Isner survives and wins in four. Very, very entertaining match. He will move on to face Philipp Kohlschreiber, who eliminated him last year in the third round.

 

Fantastic match last night between Lleyton Hewitt and Juan Martin del Potro. Hewitt ended up pulling it out in five sets in just over four hours.

If you had shown me some highlights of the match and I didn't know any better, I would have thought we were watching a Hewitt match from 2001. Some of the passing shots he pulled off were incredible.

I don't want to take anything away from Hewitt because he fought like only he can to win this match, but del Potro was clearly limited. Generally, he features a topspin forehand and mixes in the slice, but in this match, he was almost exclusively using the slice, apparently because his left wrist was giving him trouble. If you are a power player like he is, it's tough to win when you only have a slice on the backhand side.

The Aussie has a real chance to make a reasonably deep run here. In the third round, he has Evgeny Donskoy. If he gets into the fourth round, he will face either Mikhail Youzhny or Tommy Haas. Those are good players, no doubt, but neither would be unbeatable for Hewitt.

Also, kudos to the schedule makers. The easy choice yesterday would have been to put Murray on Ashe at night because he was the biggest name on the schedule, but they chose instead to go with the match that they thought would be more competitive and it paid off.

 

Couple of big matches today from an American standpoint. As we speak, Jack Sock is getting underway against Janko Tipsarevic in his third round match. Tipsarevic is the favorite here, but he has been playing like garbage for the better part of 2013, so I think Sock has a shot if he doesn't beat himself.

Isner is also due on court a bit later against Kohlschreiber. Word is that the schedule makers were considering him for the night session, but he asked to go on during the day so that he could watch the Georgia/Clemson game tonight. Can't say that I blame him. That's what I will be watching tonight as well.

 

The Isner match was familiar and strange all at once.

It was familiar because this tends to be the type of player that Isner loses to. He matches up pretty well with guys that want to match power with power because, well, no one really can.

But Kohlschreiber doesn't try to do that. He's going to play steady, get a fair number of returns in play and thanks to his experience playing doubles, he has really good hands at the net. He's also tough to play because he actually prefers to hit his backhand on the ground.

What was strange was that there was only one tiebreaker. Generally Isner losses in majors have scorelines like this: 7-6, 6-7, 6-7, 7-6, 10-8 (or 7-6 at the US Open, where they have fifth-set tiebreakers).

I have never once believed that Isner would be the USA's next grand slam champion, but I have always held out hope that he could be a guy that consistently finds himself in the quarterfinals with a shot at breaking through to a few semifinals if things break right.

Now, though, I'm convinced that this is his ceiling. He's a dangerous player that no one really wants to play, but he doesn't have the skills to really grind out long, five-set wins and at his size, his body is only going to continue to betray him as it has over the last few weeks.