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.

Andy Murray Gives Great Britain Grand Slam Win. Who's Next?

Thanks to Andy Murray, the national nightmare of British tennis fans and journalists alike is over.

For years, the British did all they could to will Greg Rusedski and Tim Henman to Wimbledon wins.

Those two were nice players, both were ranked as high as fourth at one point in their careers, but it always seemed unlikely that either of those two were going to raise their level of play and win the whole enchilada at Wimbledon.

Because it was all Great Britain had, though, an unreasonable level of expectation and hope was thrown on them. I don't have to tell you how that ended. Both retired having never reached the final at any major, Wimbledon included.

Then came Murray. There was buzz early on that he would be the one to end the curse of Fred Perry at Wimbledon, but that success didn't come nearly as fast as the British would have liked.

Murray was blown off the court in his first three major finals and then at his first Wimbledon final in 2012, he won the first set against Roger Federer only to have Federer come back and win the next three. It was hard to blame anyone for wondering if Murray was really any closer to winning Wimbledon, or any other major for that matter.

Murray put those concerns to rest with a win at the US Open later that year and now, he has achieved what I can only assume was the biggest goal on his list, winning Wimbledon.

So now the question is which of the other countries with a Grand Slam to their name will have a home country winner next?

The longest drought now belongs to Australia.

Even though Lleyton Hewitt reached number one in the world and won two major titles (2001 US Open and 2002 Wimbledon) in his career and Pat Rafter won the US Open twice, Mark Edmondson (1976) is the last Australian man to win the Australian Open.

All it takes to change a country's outlook on the future is one super-talented youngster (Jerzy Janowicz for Poland, anyone?), so things can change quickly, but barring that, I think the wait for the Aussies is likely to be the longest of the three.

Currently, they only have three players in the top 100 of the ATP rankings and one of them is Hewitt. I love Rusty as much as the next guy, but he's not going to win another major at this stage of his career.

That leaves Bernard Tomic (59, but rising after a good showing at Wimbledon) and Marinko Matosevic (72).

At 27, Matosevic is no longer a prospect and I was honestly surprised to see that he is ranked as high as he is. He has never reached the second round of a major, so it's tough to imagine him making a real run.

Tomic is a little different case. He has the talent to challenge for a Grand Slam title, but there are always distractions around him, whether it's a run-in with the law, a spat with Tennis Australia, or drama surrounding his father, who is also his primary coach.

I think he has a real chance to be Australia's Henman, although his temperament is more like Rusedski.

There are a handful of promising players coming up through the system, including players with Grand Slam experience like James Duckworth and Nick Kyrgios, but those guys haven't made a big move yet.

In a nation that should be counted among the biggest historical powers in tennis history, the wait for a player capable of winning a major championship must be excruciating. 

France has had the next-longest wait. Yannick Noah, with a win in 1983, is the last French man to win the French Open.

If you're handicapping which of the nations will have a player break through first, the safe bet is with France.

There are 12 Frenchmen ranked in the top 100 and with the way their federation has been pumping out young players of late, it's hard to imagine that well drying up any time soon.

Heck, you could see them breaking their drought here in the next couple of years if Jo-Wilfried Tsonga can put together two weeks of good tennis at Roland Garros. His results there have improved over the last several years and despite his claim that no French man will ever win the French Open, he has a real shot. 

That leaves, of course, the USA. You wouldn't believe it thanks to all the hand-wringing over the lack of an American Grand Slam champion, but the Americans have had the shortest wait of the three.

It is so often described as having been ten long years since Andy Roddick won the US Open, but in the grand scheme of things, it has just been ten years.

In terms of the wait for their next home-grown winner of their domestic Open, I would put them ahead of the Australians but behind the French.

Unlike the Aussies, the Americans do have a couple of highly-ranked players in John Isner and Sam Querrey that are still in the prime of their careers, but unlike the French, they don't have a player of Tsonga's caliber that you would describe as a threat to win a major as it stands right now.

The bigger problem for the Yanks is that there is a level of uncertainty about the group of players coming up behind Isner and Querrey. That group ranges from elite junior players that have flamed out at the top level (Donald Young) to decorated NCAA champions (Steve Johnson) to solid pros that haven't yet taken the next step in their development (Ryan Harrison).

In short, there is no Benoit Paire, a 24-year-old Frenchman ranked in the Top-25, in this group. 

For my money, the most promising of the kids is Jack Sock. The big hitter from Nebraska (sound familiar?) won the Junior US Open championship in 2010 and in 2011, he won the US Open mixed doubles championship with Melanie Oudin.

I'm not sure about you, but even in this day and age when players are peaking later in their careers, I'm not sold that any of those guys, even Sock, are going to be the next American US Open champ.

Even though the droughts vary in length, they surely feel like eternities for fans in each of the respective countries. Let's just hope for their sake that their streaks don't extend as long as Great Britain's did.

Lleyton Hewitt Takes Fans Back to the Old Days

It's no secret that I'm an unapologetic Lleyton Hewitt fan. I've written more about him than almost anyone else in this space and that's odd considering that he has been ranked over or near 100 since I started this blog.

The thing about it is that I used to truly dislike him. I didn't like how he yelled and ranted and I really didn't like how he antagonized so many of his opponents, seemingly just for the sake of antagonizing them.

But over the last couple of years, my feelings about Hewitt have changed completely. For starters, he seems to have cooled down as he has gotten older. That has made being a fan of his easier, to be sure, but I have also learned to appreciate him for what he is in his older age.

The scrappy, fiery demeanor that used to get under my skin when he was at the top of the sport is now what I like most about him. I also love that on occasion, for much shorter periods of time now, Hewitt will show you a flash of the brilliance that took him to number one in the world.

In his opening round match at Wimbledon, against 11th-ranked Stan Wawrinka, Hewitt was at his gutsiest and gave us more than just a flash of brilliance.

The Aussie didn't just hang with Wawrinka. For that matter, he didn't just beat him either. Hewitt routed him 6-4, 7-5, 6-3.

Against players the caliber of Wawrinka, Hewitt is nearly always going to be the underdog these days, but you have to love his attitude about it.

After his win, Hewitt said "He's a quality player, but going out there I didn't feel like a total underdog."

Shortly after, Hewitt answered critics that may have been calling for his retirement after all of his injuries and his drop in the rankings over the last few years.

"People ask when you're retiring but why would you retire with an atmosphere like that?" he said.

Those two quotes so perfectly encompass what I love about Hewitt. He never goes on court expecting to lose and he is going to continue to play the game until he physically can't anymore.

Until that day comes, I'll be firmly behind him.