USO '13, when the seeds start falling

Not even half of the last slam of the year has been played and already many interesting names found themselves booking their flights off from New York because of a shocking upset before time.
There have been plenty of upsets in both the men and women singles draws, but quite a few were actually stunning and opened up different possible scenarios in the final economy of the Open. Contrary to what is usually thought to happen, a lot of seeds fell in the early days of the men draw with Gulbis, Melzer, Monaco, Dimitrov, Pair all losing in the first round. Same fate for a few more names you wouldn't guess beforehand, if not for their seeding, for their level of game: Fognini was stunned by the young American Ram winning 5 games only in the whole match; while Almagro lost another one-sided match to the Underdog Denis Istomin.
The biggest surprise came from the United Kingdom though, as coming from qualies, Daniel Evans, world n°179 before  this week, stunned with his bright and various game the 11th seed, Kei Nishikori in round 1, just before achieving another quality win over the Australian Promise Tomic in the second round. The British run was stopped only by the very solid performance of veteran Tommy Robredo, who needed four tight and long sets to finally prevail and reach the 4th round, where he will be facing Federer.
The biggest surprise of the tournament in the male draw happened when the 6th seed and former champion Juan-Martin Del Potro was ousted in the second round after a terrific marathon battle of almost 4 hours won by the former world number one -and nowadays unseeded- Lleyton Hewitt. Del Potro showed the sign of a not-so-stunning form earlier in the first round, when he needed a great effort to pass through the opening round against Garcia-Lopez. It still remains a great result for the Australian, that year after year never gives up and quite a few times can find the game and the attitude of the champion he's been many seasons ago.


The women tournament started with a breaking news as Maria Sharapova/Sugarpova decided to withdraw from the US Open due to a worsening of the conditions of her operated shoulder, that might actually force her away from tennis courts until the next slam in Australia in January.
Her absence opened in the draw a few more chances as the seeding changed in favor of Italian Sara Errani, upgraded to the 4th seed and hence with a bigger chance to defend her last-year SF.

Sarita came into this US Open with a lot of pressure because of this high seed and the ghost of this SF to defend, what's more, her results this summer were far from the ones of her best weeks, but the draw looked very kind to her as in the very first round she had no problems dispatching Australian Rogowska with a double 6-0. In the second round though, her run was promptly stopped by another Italian, whose love for the US Open is so big that she could find her best tennis after a year of struggles to recover from a severe wrist injury: Flavia Pennetta. The 3-time QFinalist in Flushing Meadows showed one of her best versions of her self outplaying Sara in every department of the game closing the match in a rapid 6-3 6-1 built on 33 great quality winners.
The first ever Italian top 10 went on fighting for a place in the 4th round against the former champion Svetlana Kuznetsova, whom she had never beaten in their 5 previous meetings. The Russian clearly is not the same player as she was a few seasons ago, but the Italian pulled a great and gutsy performance to overcome the power of Svetlana.

In her 30s Pennetta found her first ever back to back slam 4th rounds, where she'll have another big hurdle to face: Simona Halep, the revelation of this summer and fresh winner of New Haven, who needed way less than one hour to win her 3rd round match against Kirilenko, seeded 14th, whose only credit for the match was to win that one game to avoid the double bagel. The match might be a great quality one as both players play a smart and bright tennis, made of both defence and offence, but despite the head to heads that see Flavia leading, Halep is the big favourite heading into this one.

Before Errani's loss in the second round, quite a big number of lower seeds had fallen in the first round and among them a few interesting name, given their pedigree and hot form: Sam Stosur, the 2-years-ago champion crumbled to local WC, the 18-year-old Victoria Duval; Kristen Flipkens, semifinalist in Wimbledon earlier this summer received a knock-down in the revenge match of Toronto's R1 by Venus Williams; Sorana Cirstea
, surprising finalist of Toronto crushed in round 2 by the hands of Japanese qualifier Kurimi Nara; Magdalena Rybarikova, winner of Washington and solid throughout the summer, was defeated by Austrian lucky loser Patricia Mayr-Achleitner and among the others Klara Zakopalova, whose lost to Hsieh could even pass unnoticed if it wasn't her 10th straight loss in the first round of the American slam.

Round 3 was then the grave of two more big names, whose career seem to be following some sort of a common pattern, despite the completely opposite playing style: Caroline Wozniacki and Petra Kvitova. If you believe that those two were battling for the world number one no longer than one and a half year ago, it might seem impossible, especially after witnessing the matches that ended their runs.
Petra won only 3 games in her match against American WC Allison Riske, a girl that she had defeated no longer than last week, even though in a long and tight match. This time the American came on court confident after the great win of German Mona Barthel and her game clicked so well that soon the Czech lost the plot and after the first set, she almost gave up the fight surrendering fast.
Quite a different story the one of Caroline Wozniacki, who seemed to have found a better game and more confidence during the summer, but that suddenly seemed to be fallen back to her insecurities and fears, which in the end cost her the match against Italian qualifier Camila Giorgi.

The Italian is well known in the tour as a very talented shot-maker, able to produce great power and at the same time very capable of moving well. Yet in the first set Caroline seemed to be able to contain the power of the Italian and at times re-use it for her own acellerations: up of a set, Wozniacki found herself close to break Giorgi's serve and capture all the momentum to flow with an easy two sets win, but after a 18 points-long game Giorgi hold serve and her confidence reached a new peak, while suddenly Wozniacki started to fear more and more the possibility to acutally lose and so her game became passive and soon her forehand broke down giving many free points to Giorgi, who winner after winner built a great performance which in the end deservedly gave her the 4-6 6-4 6-3 win worth of the round of 16.

Hot & cold in the warm summer season so far

The US Open Series is like every summer unfolding and when only two weeks are left before the big finish line in New York, some hints about players' form have already been given and the first speculations about what's to happen at the USOpen can be done.
Especially in the men series most of the big names showed up only this week in Montreal, in order to enjoy a few weeks off after Wimbledon to rest and train. That  gave the chance to other names to take advantage to the otherwise "packed" draws and take a good margin on the series' ranking. That was the case with John Isner, who sailed through the mediocre draw of Atlanta's 250 by winning it and then reached the final in Washington's 500, defeated by Del Potro in the final.
A similar situation happened in the women tournaments with world number 1 Serena Williams taking part to the race only this week in Toronto and Maria Sharapova yet to compete.

Hawaiian-like hot form

Rafael Nadal. The Spanish champion, winner of the series a few years ago, after the injury that forced himself out for most of the past season is witnessing one of the best years and after the huge disappointment of the first round loss in Wimbledon, he started his summer campaign with a terrific run in Montreal's Master 1000. En route he had to face very little resistance in most rounds, but could raise his game to edge past Djokovic in the semifinal, decided in a massive tie-break in the third set. Rafael is still undefeated on hard courts this year! Up to now he is 2nd in the series.

Serena Williams. The world number one and French Open champion came to Canada after a winning "holiday" in Bastad, where she decided to end her most successful clay season ever, in order to forget the unexpected loss of Wimbledon. To the ones who might have thought that coming back on clay just before the Hard Court season was a bad choice, she replied with a terrific run in Montreal's Premier 5. On her way to the title she dropped no set and never look on the verge of losing any, not even with Radwanska in the semis, when the Pole played a superb match and forced the American to play her best to win every point. Similarly to Nadal's case, she stands 2nd in the series.

Hot like Florida with chances of storms

John Isner. We've already mentioned his summer season so far. With his big serve and a game suitable to the American courts, John leads the Series thanks to the title in Atlanta, won in a tight service-battle of three tie-breaks with Kevin Anderson and then to the final reached in Washington. After those displays of consistency he was upsetted by local WC Pospisil in the first round of Montreal.

Juan Martin Del Potro. After the injury occurred in Wimbledon it looks like he's back on his feet and ready to compete for the only slam he has previously won: the USO. On his way to the title in Washington he was the first seed, but had to battle with other good names like Anderson, Haas and finally Isner. Maybe little fatigue prevented him from another good run in Montreal, where he was upsetted by eventual finalist Milos Raonic in the 3rd round.

Aga Radwanska. Probably the most solid girl on tour, Aga started his campaign for the USO with a good show of consistency, but she looked not as good as she used to. Despite leading the series, she had to face a couple of bad losses, especially for the implications of those losses. After having reached the final in Stanford, she was defeated by Dominika Cibulkova, in a match that seemed to be in full control of the Pole.
The week after it was Sam Stosur's turn to take her down, this time in a 3rd round. In Toronto Aga sailed through the early rounds and then put up a great fight against Serena in the SF. It's hard to see her winning the Open in this form, but she's a lock for a QF or further.

From Hot to Hailing, it's like the east-coast

Milos Raonic. The young Canadian hope reached the final on the home soil before surrendering to Nadal. On his way to the final defeated good names, but a part from Del Potro hardly any of them falls in the contenders for the title in New York and it's hard to see Milos being ready to challenge any of the big 4 at the moment.

Sam Stosur. The former USO Champion is having not her best season and after finishing out of the top 10 is surely looking for a way back to the top. Her summer started bad though, with a bad loss to Govortsova in the first round of Stanford. She could regroup and unexpectedly go on to win her first title of the year in Carlsbad upsetting Radwanska and even more surprisingly by giving no hope to World n°2 Vika Azarenka in the final. Once in Toronto the form slowly fainted and she couldn't get past Kvitova in the 3rd round.

Dominika Cibulkova. Title in Stanford, R1 in Carlsbad, QF in Toronto. Lika rollercoaster the short Slovakian player as usual shows to be one of the most unpredictable players of the tour as much able to beat anyone on a given day as to self-implode on the bad ones. Her seeding will be low in New York, but for sure she's not well liked on any contender's way.

Sorana Cirstea. Like Cibulkova, consistency has always been a problem for her, but semi finals in Stanford, QF in Washington and final in Montreal secured her a spot close to the top 20 and a career
best ranking, but most of all, her wins against Kvitova, Wozniacki and Li showed how much of a dark horse she may be in New York.

Magdalena Rybarikova. Winning titles is never easy when you are not a top name, winning the same title back to back is something huge at any level and Magda did that in Washington, by defeating players supposedly much better than her according to the ranking. The Slovakian won a tight match against best German Kerber and then destroyed Russian Ekaterina Makarova, before taking over Andrea Petkovic in the final. The following week she was also able reached the QF in Toronto where only a massive Serena Williams could stop her winning streak. That said only two weeks ago she was routined by Keys in Stanford, so it's hard to believe she'll be a safe bet for a deep run in New York.

One more reason why hurricanes have female names.

Olga Puchkova. The Russian player in Washington gave a great show of her hot-temper as after the first round win over local Star Stephens argued via Twitter to a journalist, who tried to justify Sloane's loss by saying she was rusty - "Rusty my &@@" was her reply-. But she could outdo that by getting disqualified the following round because in a moment of rage she hit a ball towards the back fence, but hit a line-man instead.

Is it even summer there?

Andy Murray. Coming from the massive win in London, he decided to have a break, but his first matches on hard courts have been a disaster, a tight win against Granollers and a one sided loss to Gulbis clearly are not the best way to start a run whose aim is to defend last year's USO title.

Janko Tipsarevic. First round in Wimbledon, flying to Bogota on Hard Courts to lose his second round match against Falla, flying back to Europe to lose first round on the Swiss clay of Gstaad and then back to Canadian's hard courts and yet another loss. Hard to believe Janko will be a contender in New York.

Gilles Simon. A losing streak of three matches is never a sign of good form, when the last two of them come on the surface of the next Slam and in both you never seem able to hurt your opponents things can't but look even worse.

Caroline Wozniacki. The two years in a row year-ending world number one has fallen in a negative spiral from the beginning of 2012 and it seems that she's unable to ever climb back close to where she's been for so long. Barely hanging in the top 10 she started her favourite part of the season with a tough loss to Sorana Cirstea in Montreal, when she blew 2 consecutive MPs in the second set. Most of her game looked there and the injured ankle seemed fine, but her mental game seems long gone.

Svetlana Kuznetsova. The former US Open champion hasn't been much of a contending for slams in the past years, but after the good display in Australia her season simply failed to deliver. A couple of injuries forced her out for a while, but in two tournaments played this summer she collected 3 losses -for once being a Lucky Loser wasn't as lucky-.

Jelena Jankovic. For the former number one being 3-2 after two weeks of the American summer season can't but be a disappointment, especially if she's won only against players ranked much lower than her and only after tough battles, while the two losses came to players closer to her ranking, but yet still below her

Angelique Kerber. The German number one is not going through an easy season, her body is always facing injuries and her game suffers a lot for that, but she has a lot to defend now and she seems just not ready for that and her top 10 status is in jeopardy. Like Caroline her losses came after tight matches, but she used to win those mental battles.

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There are still two events left to find or lose form though and then the air of slams can change a lot in the motivation and fears of players, so we are still far from being able to make any accurate prediction, which as usual will be proven wrong anyway.

Heading towards the QFs of the most random WImbledon ever? (part 1 - men)

Wimbledon, or as they call them-selves "The Championships", the whitest, the most prestigious and the most traditional of the Slams, probably the most famouse. For sure this year, the strangest. When we are still a few rounds away from the finals it seems like the only expected things are surprises: in a strangely dry edition of the British slam, it passed no day without a huge upset happening in the both women and men draws. Let's just think that out of the top 8 seeds in the women's draw only 3 are left, with the higher being Agnieska Radwanska, world number 4 and yet to win her first slam, while the other two girls who survived their seeding are former RG's champion Li Na and former Wimbledon's champion Petra Kvitova.
On the men's draw things look a little less surprising in terms of numbers, with 5 top 8 in the quarters, but the lack of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal surely does surprise more than any other number, since the two combined one 8 out of the last nine editions of this slam.
But let's see what happened in each quarter of the draw:

(1) N. Djokovic vs (7) T. Berdyck

In this quarter everything went as expected, as Djokovic reached this far without dropping a set, despite having faces a bunch of grass-courter like Tommy Haas in the previous round. The Serb looks like the favourite for the title now, mostly because his form seems to be there and he is the only Wimbledon champion left in the draw. The Czech will surely be a nice test of his chances though, because Tomas knows how to play on those courts -he's been a finalist here few years ago- and he reached this point handling perfectly a few dangerous players like the South African Anderson and the young promise Tomic, who had took down to seeds en route: Quarrey and Gasquet.
My guess is Djokovic in four sets, with the first two sets running on the edge.

(4) D. Ferrer vs (8) J.M. Del Potro
Here's another quarter where seeding was respected, likely to be with a giggle from the organizers,

who were strongly criticized when they decided to give the Spaniard the 4th seed which Rafael Nadal should have been given according to the ranking. Apparently they were right after all, because David, despite struggling with a few opponents, he could make his way up to this far, whilst Nadal didn't. It would be quite a surprise though, if he would run away from this match with a win, because his Argentinian opponent has a game that suits the surface best and despite rumors had him out of his 4th round against Italian Andreas Seppi because of a knee injury, he is still in and hasn't dropped a set yet. Ferrer on the other hand never closed in straights and it looks unlikely that his griding would bother Juan Martin on the fast grass.

L. Kubot vs (24) J. Janowicz
The Polish quarter, the clash that writes a new page for the country, since it never happened that a Polish player hit the semifinals of the Championships and so, whoever goes through this match, the record will change. The clash of the underdogs was made possible by the unexpected defeats and retirements of all the seeds: for sure the most surprising one came when Sergej Stckhovskij in the

second round put an end of Federer's record of consecutive QF in slams, but it wasn't the only one, since earlier in the first round Rafael Nadal and Stanislas Wawrinka were stunned by Darcis and Hewitt. In the end it was Kubot to take advantage of the draw and the retirement of the "killer" of Nadal in the second round, so that he could capitalize his suitable game for grass by defeating lower names and after a huge effort reaching his first Slam Quarterfinal, by defeating Mannarino in 5 sets. Lucasz surely is the underdog in his clash with compatriot Janowicz, but Jerzy didn't have an easy way either, because yesterday it needed all his talent to win the 5th set against Austrian veteran Melzer and this marathon may take its toll tomorrow. My guess is still a win for Janowicz in three.

(2) A. Murray vs F. Verdasco
Half a surprise in this section of the draw, where as espected, world n°2 and Olympic gold medallist Andy Murray sailed in full control through all his opponents without dropping a set, though in all truth, he hasn't faced any particular treat a part from Youzhny in the 4th round, but the Russian fell apart after the 2nd set's tiebreak. On the other side of the net in this QF there will be the Spanish

veteran Fernando Verdasco, at his best result at Wimbledon. The Spaniard capitalized a draw the fell apart thanks to thewalkover of Marin Cilic (10th seed), and the retirement of French hope Tsonga during his 2nd round clash with Ernest Gulbis. Murray should face much problems in this Quarterfinal, nor in the Semis, sure the whole country is cheering for him to finally win the home slam.

Bold Prediction for the final:
Murray def. Djokovic 6-4 3-6 7-5 7-5