This is why form sometimes doesn’t matter heading into the US Open. If you were to look at the list of players that were playing well heading into the US Open, that list would be: Roger Federer, Andy Murray, Marcos Baghdatis, Mardy Fish, and David Nalbandian. You could even argue that Roddick was starting to play better and might be expected to go deep.
Roger Federer and Andy Murray lived up to expectations and won handily. Federer is striking the ball well. He’s not quite the dominant player he once was, but that has more to do with the field starting to return some of Federer’s best shots (even Nadal has to deal with opponents getting some of his power shots back).
However, Marcos Baghdatis fell in five sets in oppressive conditions to veteran Arnaud Clement making some wonder if he’d played a bit too much before the the US Open (in particular, deciding to play New Haven despite reaching the semis of Cincinnati). Mardy Fish, who did take the week off, also got pushed to five sets against Jan Hajek. Fish almost pulled off an unusual feat: winning a five set match where each of the sets he won was a bagel. He had two 6-0 sets, but couldn’t pull the feat off in the fifth set, which he won 6-1.
David Nalbandian also nearly lost to unheralded Rik de Voest, but managed to get a break back in the fifth set then break again to keep himself in the tournament.
Andy Roddick just fell to Janko Tipsarevic, who had beaten Roddick at Wimbledon before, and played good tennis to eliminate the 9th seed.
Tomas Berdych hadn’t been playing hot tennis after Wimbledon, but he did get rather unlucky to play the only serve-and-volleyer in the tournament, Michael Llodra. His chip-and-charge and big serves left Berdych wondering whether he was playing well or not, due to the complete lack of rhythm. Llodra is providing a compelling case that a good server should still be able to play serve-and-volley, although there is a risk playing this style. Given how much trouble Fed has had with Berdych, he might consider serve-and-volley against Berdych, except Llodra plays a more old school style with stinging slices (Fed prefers a floating slice that buys him time in rallies) and Llodra’s serve seems to create problems for his opponents.
After reaching the semis of the French and the finals of Wimbledon, Berdych fell in the first round to Llodra and becomes the highest seed to lose. To be fair, Berdych wasn’t playing super tennis, although he nearly knocked Fed out of Toronto. Perhaps even had he been playing well, Llodra’s style would have disrupted him nevertheless.
How’s Rafa doing? Rafa felt he had played too aggressive the last two big tournaments and it lead him to unforced errors. He ran into a pretty hot Teymuraz Gabashvili who kept things close for two sets before impatience crept into his game. Gabashvili was able to use his power shots to win his serve, but played two poor tiebreaks to give the two sets to Nadal. Nadal, for his part, is serving pretty well, the pace of his first serves was higher than he normally hits it. Nadal has dialed back his aggression some, trying to get engaged in longer rallies so he doesn’t make as many errors.
Nadal will play Istomin next who can be dangerous and Kohlshreiber potentially in the third round who took a set off Nadal in Toronto. Both will have some confidence they can push Nadal. Nadal will have to be careful, but is expected to win.
Robin Soderling had his hands full with Andreas Haider-Maurer who hit an exceptional number of winners in a slugfest. Soderling managed to keep his play steady in a fifth set and let the inexperience Haider-Maurer make errors rather than exiting early as he did in Australia. This may mark a sign of maturity that pegging the ball hard all the time, especially against unheralded opponents, might not be the best idea.
Out of the 32 seeds, nearly one-third fell in the first round. Of the 10 seeds that lost, the surprising losses were Roddick, Berdych, and Baghdatis. Stepanek and Ljubicic were not so surprising, though losing to Ryan Harrison, who mostly plays Challengers and qualies of bigger events, was not something Ljubicic expected. Ljubicic, nonetheless, hadn’t played good tennis in a few months, so if he hadn’t lost to Harrison, he probably would have exited early.
Hewitt’s loss to Paul-Henri Mathieu was a bit surprising, but with him in Roger Federer’s section, yet again, it was likely a matter of time before Federer eliminated him from yet another Slam.
Djokovic once again struggled with the heat to beat Victor Troicki. One unusual stat. Djokovic seems to play better from behind. He’s never lost being down 2 sets to 1 in Slams, apparently having won the six times he’s fallen behind. He’s generally lost being ahead in five setters. He’ll get an evening match which should make him happier and there should be cooler temperatures ahead.
Davydenko is not 100% yet, and he faces Richard Gasquet next. The two haven’t played in 5 years, and they split their two encounters from 2005. Davydenko is the “better” player, and he is getting in better form, but Gasquet has been trying to get his ranking back up and show the promise that lead French experts to think he’d be among the best the French had to offer.
Verdasco needed five sets to beat Fognini who has given players (including Verdasco) trouble. He now plays Mannarino in a match he should win, but he may face Nalbandian, and that could get interesting. Verdasco might be fortunate enough that his game is coming together again after expending way too much effort in the clay season, but he’s not one of the names people are talking about, which is not surprising given his lack of recent results.
It can be difficult to assess how players are doing in the first round as some had tough first-rounders but others, like Federer, had as good a first round opponent as he could have expected.
The second round is starting, so we’ll see how everyone does!
