In Pete's absence, this is the Tribe's daily post for discussing the on-court action in Mason, Ohio, and Toronto. The order of play for the men's tournament can be found here, and for the women in Toronto, on this link.
After yesterday's results were in, I decided to take a quick look at the results on the ATP tour so far of one of TW's favourite younger players, the 6'5" Argentine Juan Martin Del Potro, currently ranked 78. He will be 19 next month; last year he was the youngest man to finish the year ranked inside the Top 100. Career-wise so far, his win-loss record is 30-28 (20-16 this year). He hails from the same town, Tandil, as fellow ATP pros Juan Monaco and Mariano Zabaleta. Apparently his nicknames are Enano, Delpo and Palito. Take your pick.
Yesterday he defeated his compatriot, Guillermo Cañas, 6-2, 6-2. Cañas, incidentally, also exited in the first round in Montreal last week, on his first appearance on a hardcourt since the final in Key Biscayne. With Cañas ranked at 14, he is the highest-ranked player Del Potro has defeated to date - sadly, few if any of us seem to have seen this match on TV, so it it isn't clear exactly how this was achieved. Del Potro says that his favourite surface is hard courts - which may help in explaining why his previous best wins (in terms of the other player's rank) were over Marcos Baghdatis and Mikhail Youzhny, then respectively ranked 17 and 18, in successive rounds in Key Biscayne earlier this year. This followed a win over then #39 Jonas Bjorkman, and that run was only ended by Rafael Nadal in the fourth round.
Today Del Potro plays Philipp Kohlschreiber; they have never met before. As it takes place on Court 4, I'm not sure that anyone will see it, unless they are there in person. Oddly enough, two of Kohlschreiber's biggest wins this year were also over Youzhny and Baghdatis.
Lleyton Hewitt and Richard Gasquet meet first on Center Court. This could turn out to be an exciting match; they have only met once before, in a tense five-set thriller in the fourth round of last year's US Open - a match Hewitt eventually took.
The big guns - Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and (I suppose after last week we can include him on probation) Novak Djokovic - are all in action today. Neither of the first two looks to be in danger. Strangely, Roger Federer and his second-round opponent Julien Bennetteau have never faced off before. Rafael Nadal is 2-0 up career-wise against his opponent, claycourt expert Juan Monaco, recently having defeated him on clay in Stuttgart. Monaco, the world #25, has taken three titles this year - all on clay. Djokovic and Moya meet today - they are 1-1 in their head-to-head. Most recently, Moya defeated Djokovic, in three sets in the Hamburg quarterfinals earlier this year; their 2006 encounter was also on clay. In their first encounter on hardcourts later today I'm finding it difficult to pick against Djokovic, even if it is the Year of Carlos.
Enjoy today's tennis!
-- Rosangel