The final grand slam of the year is just over half way complete, although it has now been postponed indefinitely due to rain. Here are the first week thoughts.
The young guns are back to being hopeless
After Bernard Tomic made a stunning run to the Wimbledon quarter finals and gave Djokovic a scare there was real hope that some young blood would do well in the US Open. However it was not to be, and it is a player who dominated the juniors 4 years ago who has made the most impact.
Ryan Harrison went down in the first round to Marin Cilic in straight sets. In the process he managed to throw a substantial amount of toys from what must have been a very large pram. Rackets were thrown, balls were kicked and it was all very undignified. Such was the behaviour he managed to draw boos from the home crowd despite being American.
Bernard Tomic did little better, winning his first round before facing Cilic in the second. Hopes were high after they had an epic battle in the 2010 Australian Open, but Cilic breezed through 6-1 6-0 6-2. After his big break at Wimbledon Tomic will be disappointed with such a poor result. Hopefully Australia 2011 will see him back to doing well.
Milos Raonic can be spared as he is till recovering from injury. However it has been a disappointing second half of 2011 for Milos after such a great start. He is yet to recover from his injury picked up at Wimbledon and has missed the chance to make a bigger impact. Once again, it is the same faces heading into the last 8.
Donald Young makes his breakthrough
There was a time when it looked like Donald Young would be Federer and Nadals next big rival. Young dominated the juniors and aged 19 had made it to number 73 in the world. He reached the 3rd round in the US Open back in 2007. It then all went horribly wrong as Young descended into mediocrity. Earlier this year, he did beat Murrays identical twin who is sent to play in Miami and Indian Wells as Murray himself cries about the Australian Open in a dark room.
Young reached a career low when he decided that the USTA were unreasonable in not giving him a wild card to Roland Garros. His truly magnificent, grammatically upsetting and mildly threatening tweet read "F*** USTA! Their full of s***! They have screwed me for the last time". He then deleted his entire twitter and hopefully learned the difference between there, their and they're.
A few months later, grown up and hopefully slightly more educated, he has made quite an impact at the US Open. He beat a rather rotund looking Wawrinka and then followed it up by beating Chela. Andy Murray awaits, and I do not intend to pass comment on his chances lest it be a jinx.
Andy Murray has his contractual-obligation horror show
Every year at the US Open, Murray throws in an absolute shocker. In 2008, he was two points from defeat against Melzer in the third round before coming back. In 2009, he was absolutely smashed by Cilic and in 2010 he ruined the entire tournament by losing from a set and a break up to a less rotund looking Wawrinka.
He has mostly erased these performances in other slams recently, having a fairly smooth run through recent Wimbledons and Australian Opens. Even his rollercoaster against Troiki at the French Open could be put down to the fact he was playing on one ankle.
His match against Haase had all the hallmarks of a classic US Open nightmare. There was the odd imaginary injury, the general shouting, the inexplicable collapse from a lead and the shouting at the camp. After losing the second set 6-2 it all looked over. Murray then tried and at 4-0 in the fifth, spent the changeover making some changes to his fantasy football team or something. Distracted, it went back to 4-4 and to be honest Haase should not have lost from there. But he did.
Horror show over with Murray looked back to his best against Lopez and should fancy his chances against Young, if it ever takes place.
Incredible amount of withdrawals
There were something like 18 withdrawals from the tournament which some, like Andy Murray, put down to the strenuous tennis season. Though this doesn't tell the whole story. It was clear that Conor Niland and Louk Sorensen were clearly both incredibly hungover after celebrating qualifying too hard. Niland in particular had all the hallmarks of a massive hangover as he threw up, walked around lethargically for a while then decided to just go back home and curl up for a while.
Robin Soderling clearly just couldn't be bothered to play, pulling out mere minutes before Louk Sorensen but with enough time that somebody else could take advantage of the Irishmans hangover. Tomas Berdych just dived and fooled the umpire into thinking he was injured. Venus Williams made up a new illness altogether that wasn't challenged while Karol Beck appears to have retired for "reason unknown".
Womens tennis continues to embarrass itself
Serena Williams will win. It is now barely a sport.
No comments:
Post a Comment