John McEnroe looked at Donald Young and found a lot to like.  He had been a number 1 junior.  He’s a lefty like Mac.  He’s a junior like Mac.  And, he’s African American.  The women have the Williams sisters.  The men, well, they had James Blake, but he peaked for a few years and is now struggling to stay relevant in the latter parts of his career.

Young and Querrey were roughly the same year having played each other at Kalamazoo, with Young the victor.  Since then, Young has struggled for several years to play good tennis.  American tennis so desperately wants a Tiger Woods for tennis that they lavished wildcards for Donald Young, and Young kept losing.  There was blame to go around.  Both of Young’s parents are tennis pros and Young has held very close to them.  A year or two ago, Patrick McEnroe, head of USTA player development, said they would use the considerable resources of the USTA to support Young, mainly coaching, if he would let them do their job, instead of his parents controlling this, as tennis parents are wont to do.

Young’s stature didn’t help.  He’s not a big player like Querrey or Isner or Cilic.  These are tall guys that use their serve effectively.  A shorter guy like Young has to earn every point, so his maturation has been much slower.  Young had two breakthroughs this year.

First, he beat Andy Murray in Indian Wells.  Yes, yes, Murray was slumping for the second year in a row.  But players like Young don’t look at these wins as meaningless.  They still take pride in the win even if the rest of the tennis world doesn’t see it that way.  More importantly, Young reached the semifinals of the Legg Mason Tennis Classic in Washington DC beating a qualifier, Jurgen Melzer (who retired), Michael Russell, and Marcos Baghdatis, before losing to Radek Stepanek.  Those were two solid wins, even if Melzer wasn’t 100%.

So today, when he took on Stan Wawrinka, he had some confidence, despite Wawrinka’s far greater experience.  Wawrinka hadn’t had a spectacular summer, but he did reach the quarters of Montreal, but lost in the opener of Cincy.  Last year, Wawrinka reached the quarters with a shot at the semis.

But Young was ready to play.  He took the opening set, and might have had it sooner, except Wawrinka came back to tie it up.  Wawa had the first chance at the set, but Young fought off set point and eventually won the first set.  Wawa then took the next two sets, and it seemed like he was going to achieve the comeback, but Young took set 4, and the fifth went to a tiebreak which Young dominated.  This puts Young in the third round of a Slam for the first time.hic

Young plays the very steady Juan Ignacio Chela, which is an eminently winnable match for Young, but is a tricky match given Chela’s ability to win without huge weapons past the age of 30.

The Dutch have produced some solid players, though never anyone that has threatened to be number 1.  These include players like Jacco Eltingh, Richard Krajicek (who won Wimbledon), and Paul Haarhuis.  In the famous Connors run to the 1991 US Open semis, it was Paul Haarhuis that Connors beat in the quarterfinals.

Since then, there had been some hope that Robin Haase might be that breakthrough player.  Unfortunately, he has had injuries including a knee surgery that kept him off the tour for months.  He was noted for pushing Nadal to 5 sets back in 2010 at Wimbledon.  More recently, Haase won his first ATP tournament in Kitzbuhel.  He also reached the semifinals of Winston-Salem, a match he probably should have won over Julien Benneteau (he had match points).

So Andy Murray was expected to struggle some against Haase, but with Murray’s recent win in Cincy, it might have been a 4 set struggle, tops.  But it was worse than that.  Haase took the first 7-6 even though Murray had gotten a break back and was up in the tiebreak.  After that, Haase got an early break in the second set and then another, and took the second set, 6-2.  Murray woke up and managed to lose only 2 more games in the next two sets, 6-2, 6-0.  Murray got up an early break in the fifth, but Haase came back to tie the match, then Murray broke again, but took several match points to win the fifth set and stood cheering at this clutch win.

Up next for Andy Murray is Feliciano Lopez who he played at Wimbledon.  Lopez beat the other Canadian rising star, Victor Pospisil, who won a round in Montreal in the second round today.  This is likely to raise more Deliciano tweets from Andy Murray’s mum.

Nicolas Mahut was not ready to pull a Nicolas Mahut on Rafael Nadal.  Nadal took the first two sets by the identical scores of 6-2 before Mahut retired.

A few other results

  • 5th seed David Ferrer took out James Blake in straight sets
  • 12th seed Gilles Simon beat Guillermo Garcia-Lopez of Spain in 4 sets.  Garcia-Lopez gave Simon the first set when he double-faulted on set point.
  • 18th seed Juan Martin del Potro played fellow Argentinian Diego Junquera (who comes from the same hometown as del Potro) and won in three sets.  The third set was close as Junquera was able to win some games and chase balls down.
  • 28th seed Isner played fellow American, Robby Ginepri, and won in straight sets.
  • David Nalbandian upset the 31st seed, Ivan Ljubicic, in 4 sets
  • Ernests Gulbis US Open run comes to an end as he lost in 4 sets to Gilles Muller
  • Julien Benneteau, who played a ton of matches to reach the finals of Winston-Salem, is still in the tournament with a straight set win over Denis Istomin.
  • Alex Bogomolov got a bit of a break.  Although he didn’t expect to be pushed to 5 sets by fellow American, Steve Johnson, he was expected to play Robin Soderling.  Soderling dropped out and this let lucky loser, Dutra da Silva, into the opening round.  Dutra da Silva won his opening round, but couldn’t handle Bogomolov.  Bogo takes on John Isner in the third round.