Flavia Pennetta, a savvy, combative Italian veteran who has always been a tough out for Maria Sharapova, should be waiting for her once again, this time in the third round of the U.S. Open, but Pennetta aside, I doubt Sharapova would trade this year’s draw for the one that took her to the Open championship in 2006.
You can’t play qualifiers and wild cards in every round. There are tough matches along the route to almost every title, but, on balance, could Sharapova have asked for anything as cozy as the lineup she was handed this week at this final Grand Slam of the year.
The queen of screams catches teenager Heather Watson of Guernsey in the first round and probably No. 84 Anastasiya Yakimova, who has been busy playing minor league tennis all summer, in the second before things get real serious with Pennetta.
But once past Flavia, she’ll most likely catch Julia Goerges (2-0 lifetime) in the fourth, Aggie Radwanska (7-1 lifetime) in the quarters and No. 2 seed Vera Zvonareva (7-3 lifetime) in the semis. Nice.
Pennetta has won one of three matches vs. Sharapova and all three went to third sets, so there is a confidence factor in this match for both players. But I like the way Maria is playing right now.
You can never be entirely confident with her when she’s hitting eight, nine, 10 double faults a match, but even with her errant serving she’s playing well enough to put away her fourth Grand Slam title. And if she somehow gets it into her brain that she doesn’t have to hit 110 mph first serves on a day when she’s getting only 50 percent of them in, and when she figures out that her ground strokes are good enough that she doesn’t have to slam big, flat second serves. . .well, then, she’s going to be that much tougher.
Who’s going to beat her in New York? Serena Williams, whose damaged foot is going to take pounding on the Arthur Ashe hardcourt for six matches? No. 1-ranked Caroline Wozniacki, who hasn’t proven to anyone that she’s experienced enough to win a major?
With Sharapova’s draw, she would be my No. 1 fovorite.
And now for the rest of the tournament, assuming there’s going to be one after Hurricane Irene turns the United States Tennis Center into a minor disaster zone. The grounds crews will be working overtime, brushing away debris, drying courts and taking down and putting up wind screens.
This is going to be an adventure.
Let’s start on the men’s side, where Novak Djokovic and his famous weary right arm plays a qualifier in the opening round. My best intelligence is that Djokovic’s arm is just fine, thank you, but he’ll be receiving daily therapy throughout the fortnight. He looks unthreatened until the quarters, where I think he’ll run into another man with arm fatigue, Tomas Berdych. They’ve played eight times and Djoko has won seven.
He’s a clear choice to win the U.S. Open.
When you examine the difficulty of draws, you separate the 128 players into quadrants and Djokovic’s 32 players include Berdych and Gael Monfils, yet another player with injury issues.
In the second quadrant, you’ve got Mardy Fish, Roger Federer and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, the Frenchman who has taken Federer out twice in a row, including this year’s Wimbledon.
In quadrant three, Robin Soderling, John Isner and Andy Murray. Soderling and Isner are a couple of bombs-away players, but Murray, of course, would only play one of them. Soderling nd Isner will play each other, for only the second time, in the third round, with. Soderling having won their lone meeting, in 2009.
In the fourth quadrant you’ve got Rafa Nadal and David Ferrer and Nadal’s route to a presumed quarterfinal match with his countryman should help him immensely in regaining the confidence he’ll need to compete in the final days of the tournament.
Rafa is 13-4 lifetime with Ferrer with nine wins in the last 10 matches, having lost only at the Australian Open, where he was a bit wounded. He should be good to the semis, where I expect Murray will be his opponent. It is Nadal’s good luck that he’s in the opposite side of the draw from Djokovic and Federer. Can he win the Open again? Sure. He CAN win. But you’d be foolish not to go with Djokovic first.
Federer? We all know his championship days are over and, in order to reach the U.S. Open final, he’d have to beat Tsonga and Djokovic in succession. I don’t see that.
Back in the women’s tournament, there was a lot of teeth-gnashing this week about Serena not being bumped up to a high seed because she’s obviously better than No. 29, which is her ranking as she works her way back from injury (she’ll be seeded No. 28 because Kim Clijsters is out with injury).
There were fears she would face an early match against an elite player and she will have to defeat No. 4 seed Victoria Azarenka in the third round, but Azarenka is not yet an elite opponent. Serena holds a 5-1 lifetime edge after beating the Belarussian 6-3, 6-3 in the Toronto semis two weeks ago.
Naturally, whatever success Williams has depends on the condition of her foot and I would suggest her injury is a lot more susceptible to re-injury than Djokovic’s shoulder. If she’s OK, she’ll have the usual difficult time with Jelena Jankovic (they’re 4-4 lifetime) in the quarters.
As for the rest of the women’s draw, no one else infatuates me.
This being the United States Open, there’s going to be a particularly strong focus on American players and, with qualifying yet to be completed, there are 14 U.S. women and 12 U.S. men in the main draws. Six of the 14 women are wild cards and six of the 12 men were given free passes. That means out of the 256 spots in the two tournaments, as of today just under 6 percent of the slots are filled by Americans. That, of course, could improve if U.S. players produce in the qualifying.
This is New York, where the USTA is headquartered and I would expect if things don’t go well for the young American players who have been wild-carded into the tournament or who have been nurtured to some extent by the USTA player development program, there will be questioned asked.
One of the most important will concern the cost-benefit factor of the millions of dollars being plunged into USTA development. What is the USTA getting in return for its high-paid coaches and high-end budget?
Combine all that with a hurricane blowing through the grounds and this probably will be one of the more memorable Opens. Line ’em up and let’s play.