While most watchers of tennis generally care about the very top of the sport, there is some intrigue in watching the little guy beat a somewhat bigger guy. Jesse Witten is ranked 276 in the world. He’s 26 years old. There are gobs of American players that have had better results from him. Roddick, Blake, Querrey, Fish, Kendrick, Levine, Reynolds, Isner. You could go on a while through names that are obscure to all but the most devoted fan before getting to Witten’s name. He’s not even the highest ranked American Jesse in the field. That would be Jesse Levine, ranked 135.
Witten was slated to play Igor Andreev, seeded 29. On paper, this shouldn’t even be close. Andreev is a pretty good player, steady and quick. More importantly, he’s a top 30 player and has been ranked higher than that. Witten had only played 6 ATP matches (futures and qualifiers don’t count, nor do qualifying matches count) and lost all 6.
John McEnroe, who plays team tennis with Witten, gave advice to Witten. Whether that helped him or not, Witten had the big upset, 6-4, 6-0, 6-2. He plays Maximo Gonzalez next, who is ranked 76 and is from Argentina. He’ll again be the underdog in this match.
Several players had easy matches. Djokovic, Querrey, Tsonga, Berdych, Cilic all won in straight sets.
And the other Jesse? Jesse Levine? He also won in straight sets over Gabashvili.
The other upset of the day was Stan Wawrinka who lost to veteran Nicolas Lapentti in five sets. Another Nicolas, Nicolas Massu of Chile, lost to countryman, Fernando Gonzalez in straight sets. Taylor Dent, who had been of the tour years due to an injury, had a very nice four set win over Feliciano Lopez.
Rajeev Ram lost his match to Ouanna, while fellow American, Kevin Kim, had a four set win over Dudi Sela.
The evening match pitted talented Ernests Gulbis against number 2, Andy Murray. Gulbis’s career is going in the wrong direction. Once ranked in the 30s, Gulbis is now ranked 95. The guy clearly hits very hard and can hit a variety of shots, but he has problems playing smart shots, often struggling against easy balls. If he had the mental tenacity of Murray, he’d easily be a top 20 player, perhaps top 10.
Even though Murray is ranked 2 and had broken Gulbis early, Gulbis was able to break back or have chances to break the Scot. Murray must have been a bit frustrated making errors when his opponent was already down. Even so, Murray was just too much for Gulbis. Even a fall chasing a drop shot didn’t faze Murray. Final score: 7-5, 6-3, 7-5. Gulbis kept it close, partly because Murray wasn’t real sharp. Murray will probably say he played well enough.
Up next for Murray is Paul Capdeville, also of Chile. Murray said he trained at the same place as Capdeville when they were young, and he had played doubles with him before. The two have never played each other on the ATP tour. Murray should be strongly favored against the 87th player in the world.
Tomorrow, Federer (playing his 2nd round match), Nadal, del Potro, and Hewitt are all slated to play. Federer will play the early match in the evening. His opponent is Simon Greul of Germany ranked 65. Nadal opens his match against Richard Gasquet in the afternoon.
