Fremen
Louie
Yinette PerezUS Open Day 2 Summary, Murray over Gulbis, Djokovic over Ljubicic
September 2nd 2009 04:27
Murray at last year's US Open
I'll start from the top:
Andy Murray beat Ernest Gulbis, 7-5, 6-3, 7-5. This match was fun to watch because both players tried a lot, and you could sense that the level of tennis was very high. Gulbis is ranked a bit low for a player of his caliber (mid nineties). Everyone was talking about how hard he hit the ball, but one thing I noticed was that when Gulbis and Murray both came to the net on points, Gulbis had the clear upper hand. I'm not sure if it was position, or just the way the points played out, but Gulbis definitely won the majority of those. He is one of those players that can hit winners all the time, but needs to learn how to win matches. With the right coaching and effort, we might see more of him even as soon as next year.
Novak Djokovic beat Ivan Ljubicic by a lot. This was one of the weirder matches I've ever seen. It seemed that Ljubcic wasn't trying as hard as he could and something about this match was just plain off. Djokovic cruised through to the second round against the hardened veteran Ljubicic.
There were, in my opinion, three upsets today. Stanislas Wawrinka, Igor Andreev, and Ivo Karlovic all fell today. Karlovic surprised me the most since I had a lot of faith in him, and I thought that his serve would take him easily to at least the third round in New York.
One match I wanted to see was between the Qualifier, Josselin Ounna and Rajeev Ram. This was twofold, since 1) I'm Indian, and 2) Ouanna had a great performance at the French Open this year, and I loved the way he played there. Hopefully they'll cover his round 2 action, and I'm sure it'll be a great match. He seems to be one of the rising players.
One American Wildcard that I can't ignore in this post is Taylor Dent. He hasn't played for four years, and today, he won his first round opener against Feliciano Lopez, who is no pushover. Taylor Dent was one of the more unfortunate players on tour, and like Blake, it's practically a miracle that he can still play. He has plates in his back and underwent serious surgery to fix it. Well, today he looked fresh, and one could see all the anguish and joy when he won his match. I'm looking forward to Round two and watching him play.
On the Women's side, the big story is Ana Ivanovic losing in the first round. After she became number one last year and won the French, people thought that she could be going places, but since then, she has failed to produce, even on clay, and was seeded 11th.
Dinara ended up winning her match, and for the last two games, it seemed that she was playing at a much higher level than the rest of it. I'm glad to see that she got her groove after all that time and found a way to win.
Sharapova also won her match, looking good, and serving very differently. After all her time off, she was seeded 29th, but she still played like a champ. She was hitting cleanly and serving beautifully. This is the first time I saw her serve like that, skill wise, and literally, since she has a completely reformed serve motion.
Overall, it was a pretty routine day at the US Open, and the highlight of the day was probably Ernest Gulbis and Andy Murray ripping winners on the Grand Stand late at night.
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