Although the French Open has long since concluded and the US Open is looming, the clay court season continues rolling.
Two events were concluded on Sunday, July 26. The International German Open held in Hamburg was won by Nikolay Davydenko. Davydenko’s ranking had slipped out of the top 10 due to an injury he sustained in Chennai earlier in the year which caused him to miss the Australian Open and the early hard court season (Indian Wells and Miami).
With his straight set victory of France’s Paul-Henri Mathieu, 6-4, 6-2, he re-enters the top 10 ranked 9th in the world.
Hamburg has suffered a demotion. Last year, it was a ATP Masters 1000 event. Due to some shuffling around, it got replaced by Madrid, which was formerly an ATP Master 1000 indoors event. Hamburg complained about its demotion, to no avail.
The good news, for Germans anyway, is that Davydenko speaks fluent German. He was interviewed by Michael Stich who returned to play some doubles, despite being pretty much retired. Hamburg wooed away Gilles Simon who was defending champ at Indianapolis. Simon continues his slide having played a poor first half of the year. However, most of his ranking points occurred in the hard court season. The question is whether Simon will play better on the hard courts or whether he will continue to lose early and see his rankings slip outside the top 10.
The Indianapolis Tennis Championships is an ATP 250 event, and suffered a setback of its own when the injury that caused Andy Roddick to drop out of the Davis Cup tie with Croatia the week after Wimbledon continued to plague him in Indianapolis. Roddick tweeted that he would return back to action in Washington DC’s Legg Mason Tennis Classic to be held next week.
Although attempts were made to get James Blake to play, rumor was he wanted more appearance money than the tournament was willing to shell out. This made Dmitry Tursunov the highest seed with a ranking of 27 last week.
Sam Querrey continued to be impressive making his second straight final. However, much like his loss to Rajeev Ram in the finals of the International Hall of Fame Championships (played on grass), Querrey again was unable to beat a lower ranked player in fellow American, Robby Ginepri. Ginepri won his third ever ATP title. He last won a title back in 2005 when he won Indianapolis. Ginepri had an easy win over Querrey, 6-2, 6-4, preventing Querrey from winning his second title ever.
On the positive side, Querrey continues to play well in somewhat weaker fields. On the negative side, he still hasn’t broken through to win titles. That has to be the next step if he expects to entrench himself in the top 20.
This week, three event are on tap. Two are on clay (Gstaad and Umag) and one is on hard courts (Los Angeles). Los Angeles was the event that raised the profile of Juan Martin del Potro who beat Andy Roddick en route to the title. del Potro continued his win streak by winning in Washington DC the following week. Los Angeles, like Indianapolis, is an ATP 250 event. Washington DC is an ATP 500 event and is expected to garner a decent draw (no one in the top 4 will play, however). Last year’s DC and LA draw were partly decimated by the Olympics.
