If you hadn’t watched Murray’s first round match, a 62 64 61 straight set match over Alex Bogomolov, you would have thought he had a comfortable win, without too much stress, but it was anything but.  Bogomolov was able to break Murray 4 times, quite impressive, given the lop-sided score in the Russian’s favor, but Murray broke 9 times, perhaps the only positive out of the whole match.

This time around, Murray broke 6 times, but didn’t get broken.  Murray generally follows up a “bad” match with a good one, and this is the kind of match he wants to play.  Quick and efficient.  Murray moved the ball around well.  He didn’t have to deal with heat and humidity.  Dodig struggled to stay even despite not playing that badly himself.

The final score, 62 61 63, really was as easy as it looked.

Murray was the only player to play a second round match.  The rest of the matches were completion of the first round matches.  The US Open is the only tournament that stretches the first round matches over 3 days for the men.

John Isner needed 4 sets to beat Xavier Malisse and required two tiebreaks to do so.  Americans, overall, had a great first round with the only loss occurring when two Americans played each other.  In particular, Steve Johnson, former NCAA champ, beat Rajeev Ram in the first round.  Ryan Harrison beat Benjamin Becker.  Brian Baker beat Jan Hajek in straight sets. Bradley Klahn, a top college player, had a nice 5-set upset over Jurgen Melzer who has fallen from his top ten a few years ago to numerous losses.

David Ferrer had an easy win over Kevin Anderson who has struggled some the last few weeks to secure wins.  del Potro’s original first round opponent was fellow Argentine, David Nalbadian, who dropped out.  It took a while to determine that his first round opponent was lucky loser, Florent Serra.  del Potro won straight sets.

8th seed, Janko Tipsarevic, struggled against Guillaume Rufin, dropping the first two sets against the Frenchman, before waking up and finishing the last three sets efficiently.  Tipsy faces Baker in the second round.

Tommy Haas had has a very nice year and worked to a 21st seed, but he had the misfortune of playing Ernests Gulbis.  Gulbis might be the best player that never was.  He has the power.  He has the finesse.  He also has the mental fortitude of Marat Safin without enough of the high points that Safin reached.  Gulbis had a nice run a few years ago, but slipped back to obscurity.  Gulbis traditionally exits early in a Slam which he could still do, but he managed to come back from two sets down to Haas to take the match in 5 sets.

In another 5-setter, Gilles Muller, who made the finals of Atlanta, came from two sets down to Mikhail Youzhny, to win in 5 sets, the last two in tiebreaks.

Tomorrow, Roger Federer plays another evening match.  His opponent is the speedy German, Bjorn Phau.