Everyone knew that Andy Murray was in a slump.  He lost in the opening round of Indian Wells to Donald Young (Junior) and then lost in the opening round to Alex Bogomolov (Junior).  In the pros, a win is a win.  You don’t care if Murray is slumping.  Any win over a top pro is considered a victory as if they had been playing their best.  If you need more evidence of that, Bogomolov is having his best year on tour.  Obviously, this is relative.  He’s not winning tournaments, but he’s making deep runs (for him) and beating players he hasn’t beaten before.

Bogomolov reached the third round of Wimbledon beating Donald Young (Junior) in the opening round and upsetting Juan Ignacio Chela before falling to Tomas Berdych in straights.

Bogomolov credits his coach with coming up with a good strategy to play Tsonga.  Their first observation, one that’s not too hard to see, is Tsonga’s forehand is a huge weapon.  The idea was to keep away from his forehand hitting high shots to his backhand, then hoping for a good shot and attacking.  Bogomolov was able to execute this perfectly to a 6-3, 6-4 win.

Bogomolov will face Andy Murray in the next round.

Grigor Dmitrov is often mentioned with the young bucks: Bernard Tomic, Ryan Harrison, and Milos Raonic.  Occasionally, Richard Berankis is mentioned.  Of the group, Raonic has had the biggest breakthrough winning San Jose.  However, he’s faded ever since he got injured and there’s been little word from him.  Tomic plays rather sparingly usually needing wildcards to get into bigger events.  He did make it a few rounds at Wimbledon, and gave Djokovic a bit of a scare with his unusual style of play.  He may have the biggest upside.  Ryan Harrison reached the finals of Atlanta, then reached the semis of Los Angeles losing both times to Mardy Fish, and is making progress behind his big serve.  His main issue is controlling his intensity which sometimes gets the better of him.

Today, Dmitrov caught David Ferrer at a good time.  Ferrer had been off the tour since his finals appearance against Robin Soderling in Bastad just after Wimbledon.  He didn’t play Montreal because he was injured, so like many players last week, Ferrer was a bit rusty.  Dmitrov was able to take the first set, 6-4.  Dmitrov had an early break, but Ferrer got back on serve, then made a bad error at 30-40 and lost the first set.  Ferrer easily took the second set, 6-1.  The two players stayed even until 5-6 when Ferrer put Dmitrov in a 0-40 hole.  Dmitrov managed to get an unforced error and play two good points to reach deuce, but then lost the next point, and the ensuing match point.

Although he gets compared to Federer, mostly because of his one-handed backhand, Dmitrov’s one-hander is more problematic.  This isn’t Richard Gasquet in the budding.  Ferrer would hit shots deep to the forehand that gave him a nice neutral ball to hit, then pound deep to Dmitrov’s backhand.  This would cause Dmitrov to play defensively, often slicing shots back.  Even in neutral rallies, Dmitrov’s backhand has a tendency to drop short, and often right into the net.

Despite this, Ferrer had enough errors that Dmitrov had chances to break his serve and serve out the match, but Dmitrov made a few too many errors.

There are two evening matches scheduled.  The marquis match is Djokovic against Ryan Harrison.  Also, there is Gilles Simon taking on Janko Tipsarevic.