On the third day of the Australian Open, Americans were not faring well.  Mardy Fish and Donald Young both lost, and John Isner nearly lost too.

Let’s start with the Isner match.  John Isner’s second round match was against David Nalbandian.  John Isner’s strengths and weaknesses are well-known.  He serves big.  He has a big forehand.  He doesn’t move that well.  His fitness is a bit suspect.  His heart isn’t.

David Nalbandian is much like Lleyton Hewitt.  These two guys were near the top of the game (Hewitt reached number 1) about a decade ago.  It’s been a good five years since either was somewhat good.  Certainly, neither player are contending for Slams.  However, they are still very steady players that can chase balls down.  They just lack the kind of power today’s players have to scare the competition.  Oh yes, they’ve also been injured.

Nalbandian’s strategy was simple.  Try to get Isner’s serve back and move him around.  Drop shot the big man and work on his lack of speed skills.

Despite Nalbandian’s strategy working out quite well, Isner has a lot of fight in him.  Isner gets into matches where he struggles to break.  He knows he has to go into big serve mold and have to hold every single time.  And that was what Isner had to do in sets 4 and 5.

The controversy occurred in in the final set, 8-all.  John Isner had been struggling a bit to hold his own serve while not being able to take advantage of the few opportunities to make inroads on Nalbandian’s serve.  Isner was also beginning to cramp especially between sets 4 and 5 when Nalbandian took a break and Isner sat down for quite a few minutes and tightened up some.

Down 30-40, Isner hit a big serve up the T.  The line judge called the ball out.  There was murmuring from the crowd.  Chair umpire, Kader Nouni, overruled.  David Nalbandian didn’t quite hear this because of the crowd.  He sought clarification to what happened.  He found out the call had been overruled so he challenged.  Nouni said Nalbandian had waited too long and refused to let him challenge.  Nalbandian became livid.  He asked for a tournament referee to come out.  The referee basically said this was a subjective decision.

Eventually, Nalbandian did decide to play, but since he couldn’t challenge, Isner got the ace and brought the game to deuce.  He eventually held serve.  Although Nalbandian got a good start in his game, Isner got a few good shots in and hit a few bad drop shots.  Isner managed to get into a tight net exchange and won.

Nalbandian, to his credit, took things in stride.  He waved to the crowd and headed out.  During the press conference, when he heard that the serve was out, he complained to the press.  The match was over by then, but he felt he challenged in plenty of time and the chair umpire was overstepping his bounds.

Earlier in the day, Mardy Fish was playing Alejandro Falla.  Fish, to be fair, was not playing well.  He made over 50 unforced errors.  However, what bothered him the most was Falla getting various breaks.  Fish prides himself on being very fit and being impervious to heat.  He felt Falla was not so fit and that he was breaking the rules by taking these breaks to recover.  This has happened before.  For example, Novak Djokovic, prior to last year, often struggled with heat.  He’s defaulted out of several Slams because of his lack of fitness.

Marcos Baghdatis was playing Stan Wawrinka who won the first two sets.  Baghdatis was so upset with himself and smashed not one, not two, but four racquets.  This seemed to enliven Baghdatis who took the third set.  However, it wasn’t enough to win the match.  Wawrinka took the fourth set and the match.  Most commentators found the racquet smashing more amusing than malicious.