NEW YORK—Well, it's another rainy day in Flushing Meadows, but I sucked it up and made it here. So did our TENNIS **magazine intern, Brad Kallet, who had to catch the proverbial trains, planes and automobiles to get here from his home home in New Jersey—all in the pouring rain, with little hope of seeing a single tennis ball hit in anger. Gotta hand it to the kid, he sure is persistent. And we actually found him a piece to write, which will appear either here or on the home page later. He's going to check out the umpires and ballboys, all of whom are captives on site all day (unlike fans and players) and work something up on them.
One perk of tenure as a tennis journalist is that it earns you an exemption from having to write rainy-day ballboy or umpire pieces. That also leaves me high and dry, figuratively speaking, because another unspoken axiom of the trade is that you only get one rainy day story out of a particularly bad spell of weather, unless of course the tournament is in full swing and you can hunt down some coaches or players, or analyze the draw. This tournament is not only not in full swing, the draw won't be made until Thursday, and the qualifying has barely started.
I had hoped to get together with Robert Kendrick today, but he stayed in the city. It won't be a total write-off of a day for me, though, because I have a call booked later this afternoon with Larry Ellison, the hugely successful Internet entrepreneur and new owner of the Indian Wells tournament. I'll have to return to the city to get that one done.
But let's take a quick look at some recent news, just to keep our spirits up.
—Yesterday, James Blake was involved in the shortest match played on the tour so far this year—a 35-minute, 6-0, 6-1 affair. The good news for Blake is that he was on the winning end for a change. I just went to the ATP website and am delighted—and amazed—to see that play apparently is in progress in New Haven, despite the horrible weather here in New York.
Today, Blake is meeting Alexandr Dolgopolov, about whom I've been hearing good things. We'll keep our eyes on him in the coming days. I hope the quick-time win has boosted Blake's confidence.
—Elena Dementieva presently is fighting cheek to jowl with Kateryna Bondarenko, 3-all in the third. Which begs the question, just how fit and match-ready will Dementieva be for the U.S. Open, where she's often played so well in the past?
It's funny, but when I think of Dementieva, the thing that comes to mind is all those tournaments, a dozen or so, where she played like a house on fire and looked like a can't miss winner or finalist. . . yet always missed. Choking, injuries, inexplicably bad days (for someone who had been playing so well, and had learned the value of seizing opportunity) are the personal history she's written at the majors.
Frankly, I'm shocked she hasn't won one, and I'm rapidly losing the once airtight conviction that she would bag a major one day. For her sake, I'm glad she won that Olympic Games gold medal. Given the typical Russian's reverence for Olympic athletes and events, I imagine that Dementieva sticks that gold medal under the sheets when she goes to sleep, to keep her warm and optimistic.
—Is Marcos Baghdatis resurgent (again) for real? It's an interesting, open question, because Baghdatis has been showing signs of the one quality that regular Grand Slam contenders demonstrate. He's been playing consistently. The headline at the ATP website blares, "Baghdatis Continues March to US Open," which is a nice bit of hyperbolic writing, if nothing else.
Baggy has put up three wins over Top 10 players in the past month, and improved his record on the summer hard-court circuit to 10-4. Often, a talented free spirit like Baghdatis will play well for a tournament or two, then fade. But Baghdatis, who beat TomasBerdych and Rafael Nadal en route to a semifinal loss to champion Roger Federer at the Western and Southern Financial Group Masters, continues to play like he means it. He's the top seed at the Pilot Pen Classic in New Haven this week, and while the conditions there have been tough, he's declared his intentions: “It’s been a good summer for me, but I came to play here and I came to win the tournament,” he said, after knocking out Igor Andreev yesterday.
Oddly, this resurrection coincides with that of another player who has a game and form chart similar to that of Baghdatis: David Nalbandian. Both of them could be impact players at the Open. Just for the hail of it, I took a look at their head-to-head record, and it confirms the parallels. Baghdatis holds a narrow 3-2 edge, and won the last three matches running, until Nalbandian put up his second win over Baggy a few weeks ago at the Legg Mason Tennis Classic (Washington D.C.). Three of their five meetings have occurred at majors (2-1 for Baghdatis), and the Cypriot beat the Argentinian in the most critical meeting of them all—the Australian Open semifinals, 2006, thereby earning the privilege of getting spanked in the final by Roger Federer.
But mark your calendars, everyone. A U.S. Open meeting of these two talented shotmakers looms as must-see tennis.
!103553307 —I don't know who's going to be in a tougher position, mentally and emotionally, when the U.S. Open gets underway: Melanie Oudin or Caroline Wozniacki. After Serena Williams, they were the top WTA newsmakers at the American championships last year—Oudin for that courageous, mesmerizing run to the quarters; Wozniacki for reaching the final. Oudin bowled over three high-quality Russians during her spree at Flushing Meadows: Dementieva, Maria Sharapova, and Nadia Petrova, before she was halted by Wozniacki.
This year, Oudin has won exactly one match at a major (a win over Anna Lena Gronefeld at Wimbledon), and I was somewhat surprised to see that she's ranked no. 44—I expected it to be lower. Wozniacki is 10-3 in the majors (she reached at least the round of 16 at each Grand Slam event), but as a defending finalist, a lot will be expected of her—and her losses at the majors have been alarming, one-sided blowouts (Petra Kvitova bombarded her, 6-2, 6-0 in their fourth-round match at Wimbledon).
BTW, Oudin, Wozniacki, John Isner and Sam Querrey are part of a promotional package conceived by U.S. Open sponsor American Express. They've created a cheerfully optimistic space for the quartet, billing them as "Next Contenders." Amex is planning to seed this dedicated website with exclusive material about and by those four players all the way until the end of the U.S. Open. So if you're a fan one any of them, check it out. And while we still don't know Isner's U.S. Open status (ankle), I have some exclusive material about John that I also plan to post in the coming days.
Wozniacki's big win in Montreal the other day is sure to help her confidence, but I still think both she and Oudin have their work cut out for them if they hope to match their results of last year.