US Open First-Round Matches I'm Excited to Watch

After what turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable US summer hardcourt season, the US Open is finally upon us. The draw came out Thursday afternoon and the qualifying is wrapping up Friday.

Ahead of the main draw starting on Monday, let's take a look at the first-round matches I'm excited to watch.

Lleyton Hewitt vs. Brian Baker

I promise that I don't intend on making my entire blog a Lleyton Hewitt blog, but sometimes it seems that way. I can't help that he is constantly a dangerous "floater" in major draws and that he has a penchant for pulling big upsets and having long matches filled with momentum swings and drama.

Here, he just happens to be matched up against a player that I also happen to be interested in watching.

In the late spring and summer of 2012, Baker was the toast of American tennis, as he fought back from numerous injuries to make it into the tennis mainstream.

In late April, he was still having to play qualifying to get into Challenger tournaments. Then, he made the finals at the clay court event at Nice. He followed that up with winning a match at Roland Garros and taking Gilles Simon to five sets in the second round. He topped it all off by coming through the qualifiers to make it to the round of 16 at Wimbledon.

He wasn't able to continue to play at that level for the rest of the calendar year, but he still had nice moments, which made us think that maybe he was going to continue to be a name to watch in American tennis moving forward.

The year 2013 has made us rethink that. The bugaboo that had hampered Baker's career prior to 2012, injuries, returned in 2013.

Baker advanced to the second round of the Australian Open and took a set from Sam Querrey before he was forced to retire from his match there. After that, we didn't see Baker until he played a Challenger event in Aptos, California earlier this month. All told, he has only played four matches since the Australian Open and only two of those (at Cincinnati) were in a top-level event.

We know what Baker is capable of, but we haven't seen that in over a year.

Hewitt won't give him an easy win in the first round, either. Rusty hasn't come anywhere close to returning to his form of a decade ago, but he has made a habit of making noise (or at least being a nuisance to an opponent) at majors.

The winner of this match will likely face Juan Martin del Potro in the second round, so neither is long for this tournament, but winning this opener would be big for either player.

Denis Istomin vs. Nicolas Almagro

One place I always look for upsets in the draw is a dangerous floater taking on a ranked player that is playing on a surface they don't like. This match fits that bill.

Calling Almagro's summer hardcourt season unsuccessful would be a massive understatement. He only played in two events, the Masters 1000 events in Montreal and Cincinnati, and he lost in his first match in both.

Last season, Almagro actually made it to the fourth round of the US Open, his best performance at the tournament to date, but I'm willing to bet that's the best he ever does at the event.

Istomin, on the other hand, has been pretty good this summer. He advanced to the quarters in Atlanta, won a match and took a set off of Sam Querrey in Washington, D.C. and then advanced to the round of 16 and took a set off of Novak Djokovic at the Masters 1000 event in Montreal.

He will also come in with a ton more matches under his belt on American hard courts. He has been in the states for over a month now playing on the surface and getting ready for the US Open. Almagro, on the hand, has just a couple of pitiful performances to show for his summer.

Almagro is too talented to get blown off the court by Istomin and I certainly won't be surprised if he wins, but don't be shocked if he ends up in a five-set battle that he did not bargain for.

Jack Sock vs. Anyone

Sock is slated to take on a qualifier in the first round, so we will know who is facing late Friday night, but to me, it doesn't really matter.


I tend to be a pretty patient tennis observer. I realize that we live in a world where tennis players are developing later than they ever have. The days of phenoms coming in and winning majors in their mid-teens are more than likely over.

But with that being said, I'm itching for Jack Sock to take the next step in his development and burst through to the second week of a major.

Last year, it was nice to see him advance to the third round of this tournament, but even I have to admit that he was living a charmed life on the way to getting there. In the first round, he took on a hobbled Florian Mayer, who ended up having to retire from the match and in the second round, he drew Flavio Cippolla, a very beatable opponent. He was outclassed in the third round by the aforementioned Almagro, who, as we mentioned, isn't the greatest on hardcourts.

If he gets by his opponent in the first round, he will likely draw Jerzy Janowicz. That's a tough ask for the young American, but what I would be looking for there is for Sock to dig in and give him a fight. If both of these guys are hitting like they are capable of, that match would be a lot of fun.

Marinko Matosevic vs. Tommy Robredo

This match also fits into the same category as Istomin/Almagro.

Matosevic is a serviceable pro who has had a pretty decent summer. He advanced to the quarterfinals in Washington, D.C., taking down the likes of Nikolay Davydenko and Milos Raonic along the way and he came out of the qualifying tournament to make it to the quarterfinals of the Masters 1000 event in Montreal, where he put up as much of a fight against Rafael Nadal as pretty much anyone else has on the hardcourts this summer.

Robredo is no fan of hardcourts and like Almagro, he doesn't have a ton of matches under his belt on this surface going into the tournament. He did well advancing to the round of 16 at the Masters 1000 event in Cincinnati, but that only gives him three matches on the US hardcourt circuit. Robredo was still playing on clay as recently as late-July in Umag, Croatia.

He has made several fourth-round appearances at the US Open in his career, but Robredo just doesn't pose as big a threat at this tournament as he does at, say, the French Open.

If he can continue to play well, Matosevic may have a chance to finally get a win at a major and put an end to his winless record at majors in his career, which now sits at 0-10.

Florian Mayer vs. Juan Monaco

As a tennis fan, neither of these players really do a lot for me. Mayer, while a nice player, kind of gets lost in the shuffle with a lot of players that have cycled in and out of seedings at majors and because Monaco plays a schedule almost exclusively made up of clay court events, I rarely get to see him. When I do, it's usually at a tournament where he doesn't play well.

But I'm anxious to see this match because I think both of these players could really use this win.

After spending much of last year in the 20s, Mayer now finds his ranking all the way down at 47. It's not like he has lost a lot of points because he has had to sit out tournaments, either. He just really hasn't played well at any point this season.

Most recently, he entered both Masters 1000 events, but came away with only one total win and that was against Bernard Tomic, who has spent most of the summer looking listless and disinterested. Mayer lost after retiring in the third set against Jack Sock last year at the US Open, so with few points to defend, winning a couple of matches here could really help boost his ranking.

Much like Mayer, Monaco's ranking has been dropping precipitously for most of the year. After spending much of last year with his ranking sitting in or around the top ten, Monaco now sits at 31.

Monaco couldn't buy a win until he put together a nice run to the semifinals in Houston. Since then, he has been a little bit better, but his successes are almost exclusively on clay.

In his career, Monaco has played in the US Open nine times. Seven times, he was eliminated in the first round. The other two times, he made it all the way to the fourth round. Go figure.

Something's got to give between these two struggling players and I think the one that survives may very well use that momentum to finish up 2013 nicely in the fall season.