Waiting for Ze Man

The new center court at Beijing’s Olympic Green Tennis Center has two names. The first and most official is the National Tennis Stadium. The second and sexier is the Diamond Court. Whether the different monikers symbolize a split in the Chinese psyche—old-fashioned nationalism on one side, newfangled status on the other—I don’t know. But it does have a different ring to it than the complex’s next two largest arenas, the Lotus Court and the Moon Court. The Diamond, which seats 15,000 people and has a retractable roof, opened last year. Yet somehow, during the China Open this week, its darkened raw-concrete walls have made it look less than shiningly new.

Maybe it seemed that way to me because my assignment today was to write about the men in Beijing, on a day when the action was mostly on the women’s side. There one native daughter, Li Na, beat another, Shuai Peng, in a third-set tiebreaker, while Angelique Kerber edged Caroline Wozniacki 6-4 in the third set. Throw in wins by the top-ranked women in the world, Victoria Azarenka and Maria Sharapova, and you’ve got a women’s even worthy of its Premier designation.

On the men's side, it has been upset city in Beijing thus far. Going into Friday's quarterfinals, six of the tournament’s eight seeds are gone, including David Ferrer, who retired in the first round with tennis’s disease of the week, a stomach virus. Today, though, the men’s round of 16 matches today were mostly routine: Sam Querrey beat Andreas Seppi; Mikhail Youzhny beat Kevin Anderson; and Feliciano Lopez beat Yen-Hsun Lu. All were straight-setters. But the fourth match was a surprise and a crowd-pleaser: China’s Ze Zhang, ranked No. 165, upset No. 14 Richard Gasquet in three sets in front of a suitably, and at times inappropriately, vocal home audience.

Here are a few thoughts on that match and others from the men’s day in Beijing.

Sam I Always Am

The deadliest of the four men’s matches today was Sam Querrey’s 6-1, 6-4 win over Andreas Seppi in a resoundingly silent Lotus Court. Seppi handed Querrey the first set, with double faults and unforced errors, then made it a match in the second. Not that anyone seemed to notice the difference.

Still, Querrey is an interesting case. In 2012, he has been the anti-Donald Young of American tennis. While DY has gone from the Top 40 in February to No. 185 in October, Querrey, his former junior rival, has done exactly the opposite over the same short period of time. Ranked No. 106 on February 2, he’s currently No. 26.

Querrey has made a long, but rapid, climb back from elbow surgery last year. He has re-cracked the Top 30 again seemingly at will. Of course, in reality, that surge came with plenty of effort; Querrey’s mellow demeanor belies a solid work ethic, as long as he's into it. At the same time, watching him against top players, most recently in his four-set loss to Tomas Berdych at the U.S. Open, it seemed to me that he had a definite ceiling. Querrey, unlike his countrymen Isner and Fish, has no signature wins over top players. He has power, but not unbeatable power, and he doesn’t have a lot of speed. Querrey’s serve and forehand are competitive with the best in the sport, but it didn’t seem to matter what he tried against Berdych that night at the Open. It wasn’t going to work. It also appeared that, at a certain point, Sam knew it.

Yet Querrey is still just 24, young by today’s pro standards. Is he destined to spend the next five, six, seven years of his life hovering where he is now? Or is there a way for him to go higher?

Waiting for Ze Man

That’s what the ATP is doing. The tour would love an Asian star to match the WTA’s Li Na. With current CEO Brad Drewett in the lead, it has expanded its Asian infrastructure to China. They've built it; now all the tour needs are the fans to come. Which means it needs a player.

Is Zhang the man? Considering that's he's 22 and ranked a career-high No. 165, and that his lifetime ATP record is 4-15, the answer is likely no. But as the first Chinese man to enter a Grand Slam event, he’s still a pioneer. Now he has a win over a Top 20 player, Gasquet, and is in the quarters of a tour event for the first time.

It might have helped that Zhang’s coach, Guillaume Peyre, used to work with Gasquet, or that the Frenchman was coming straight from a title run in Bangkok. It certainly helped that once Gasquet was up a break in the third set, he completely froze and went back to playing passive, deep-behind-the-baseline tennis. But...Zhang also took his chances and made his shots. He can be fun to watch when things are going well. He moves up and swing for the fences, especially on the backhand side. He takes sometimes-foolish chances, especially with his drop shot. And he has an earring and a cool nickname: Big George. I guess I get the big part—he’s 6-foot-2—but I’m not sure about the George.

Zhang plays Florian Mayer next. He’s already popular enough that one of the ball kids, when the match was over, followed him out to the middle of the court and offered him his towel as he waved to the crowd.

As for Gasquet, the wait for Richard G continues. Poor Reeshard: Perhaps only he could make being the 14th best tennis player in the world seem like a waste of talent.

If a Man Does a Salute and No One Sees It...

I wondered, as Mikhail Youzhny shook hands with Kevin Anderson today after his exceedingly routine 3 and 3 win, whether he would bother to pull out his famous racquet-on-head, military-style salute. I shouldn’t have wondered. Why would he pass up the chance? Just because there were very few people there for him to salute, and most weren’t watching him anyway? A win is a win, and a tradition is a tradition. He went through his elaborate motions quickly, but with a smile.

Youzhny beat fellow veteran Tommy Haas in the first round, and will face Jo-Wilfried Tsonga next.

Feliciano Lopez: Your Average Guy?

This past weekend, Kamakshi Tandon and I talked about how the fall season is a reward for the dedicated. That was true today in the case of Lopez, who beat Ysen-Hun Lu in two sets to reach the quarters. Feli, of course, has a playboy’s reputation, but he’s also one on the tour’s working class heroes. This is his 24th tournament of 2012. When Lopez hasn’t found an ATP event to play, he’s entered Challengers in Bogota and Montpelier. For Feli, as with most pros, the longer the season, the better.

In general, Lopez beats the players he should be beat and loses, sometimes after a struggle, to those he shouldn’t beat. Sounds a little like Sam Querrey. They play each other next. It’s hard to say who should beat whom in this case. Lopez, currently ranked No. 30, has a 2-1 head-to-head record, but the 26th-ranked Querrey won their last match, in Winston-Salem this summer. Let the dedicated men of the second-tier have their moment.

It Can Be Lonely in the Booth

Today we were mostly left alone, with a single commentator at a time, from Beijing. Robbie Koenig called the Youzhny-Anderson match, and then someone on the Tennis Channel whom I couldn’t identify did the Querrey-Seppi match.

I once did online text commentary for the Olympics on my own. Essentially, you’re talking to yourself the entire time, which can do weird things to your head. Before long, you’re asking yourself questions, which is what happened to our announcer today.

At one stage, he asked, “I know what you’re thinking, what about the Italians?”

His answer? “I’m glad you asked.”