The big news is that Andy Murray, defending champ of Valencia, lost in 3 sets to Juan Monaco.  Murray has lost to Monaco before, but on clay.  He did mention that, due to his brother’s wedding (last week), he wasn’t as prepared as he had hoped to be.  He is now pinning his hopes on Paris, a Masters 1000 event, instead of Valencia, an ATP 500 event.  This may be Murray’s new approach to tournaments.  Don’t win everything, just aim for the big tournaments.  The idea is to stay focused on big events and not expend full effort on smaller tournaments, even one as relatively large as Valencia.

Andy Roddick, who was injured back in Shanghai, returned back, and a had a nice win over Sam Querrey in Basel.  Federer had a comfortable win over Tipsarevic, a guy who once gave him a big scare, but has mostly floated around 40 in the rankings.  Federer generally doesn’t lose to someone ranked about 40.

Robin Haase, a talented if oft-injured Dutch player, who gave Nadal all he could handle at Wimbledon, knocked out big-serving, John Isner.  Haase is also a big hitter, so he probably gave Isner a lot of trouble with his pace and mobility.  A good result (so far) for Haase.

Tomas Berdych continues his slide with a loss to Tobias Kamke, losing in straight sets.

Fernando Verdasco is still trying to qualify for the ATP World Tour Finals, but a straight set loss to Gilles Simon won’t help his cause.  This is good for Simon who has been playing well recently, after a year and a half of mediocre play, due to an injury.