 We've reached the third round of the 2007 US Open and amazingly enough, so have John Isner and Donald Young . A-Rod and James Blake have earned their spots too, so the American flag will wave high at the first full weekend of the tournament. None of that changes my opinion about who can win this year's Open, but it is a relief after a year of disastrous results for the Americanish at the Grand Slams, that our big guns have made it to the knockout stages of the tournament. The biggest surprise of the first week, for me, is that Rafael Nadal's patella tendonitis is already hurting him. Another week of tough play on the rubberized concrete, and our youthful hero will be in a lot of pain.
Rafa is tough and competes extremely hard. Having started this tournament he will not leave without a fight, but as I mentioned earlier, that kind of patella tendonitis actually ended my soccer career and led me to undergo an experimental surgery with only moderate success. Rafa will have, I'm sure, extremely professional care, but the condition is the result of too much play, and the symptom is a dull-aching pain in the knee joint that tells your body not to put weight on it. Patella tendonitis is the result of the patella tendon, which connects the upper and lower leg muscles and runs directly below the knee cap, tracking poorly in its groove. The tendon begins to chafe, usually pulled to one side of the other because of tightness, and the pain reaction and scar tissue restricts blood flow in the region, causing all sorts of secondary problems. Treatment is primitive, and for many years has been rest, ice, and a tendon strap. Rafa uses tape to keep the tendon pressed into its groove. It doesn't work when you're moving laterally.
I can guarantee you that when Rafa wakes up in the morning, he does not want to go up or down stairs, and that's a sad place to be as a pro at his age. What he needs is six months of rest with a strict regimen of stretching and strengthening to get the blood flow in the joint back to normal. What he doesn't need is more play, more pain, more restriction of movement. Because if he goes that rout, he will end up with issues in the hip on that side and muscle atrophy of the medialis. All I can say is that my heart goes out to him, but he can't win like that, particularly against a cocksure Djokovic who's going to make him chase a lot of balls.
James Blake, in front of his meat-headed J Block, won his first five-set Grand Slam match last night against a very plucky Fabrice Santoro . Santoro is one of the smallest and oldest guys on tour, but he is the very picture of a healthy veteran and still moves around the court very easily. He is working on a record of 61 Grand Slam tourney appearances, a remarkable feat heretofore only matched by Andre Agassi. The record tells of his longevity and quality as a player. All of that said, he came into the match with Blake 2-7 all time against Top 10 opponents in Grand Slams. He was a good test for Blake, though, who tends to play either phenomenally well, dictating play entirely, or very poorly, spraying errors like the Orkin man spray cockroaches. Last night we saw some of both. Santoro is the perfect Platonic form of the pusher. Imagine your biggest public park nightmare and then multiply it by a factor of a hundred. He doesn't miss or hit winners. He gets to everything. He hits two hands from both sides. He uses your pace but doesn't generate it. And on top of all that, he came into the match on the leaderboard for aces, having sneakily developed a massive first serve over the course of his career, a remarkable feat for a guy his size.
Santoro played a good match and kept pressure on Blake by winning the second set. Blake still isn't a mature competitor. He's kind of sulky and lashes out at the ball when he's angry. He has that look on his face that he's still playing to play well and not to win exactly. But he has an all around game and can whip winners in from a lot of different places. I thought he did well last night, using the night time crowd and riding momentum through a tough opponent playing at his highest level.
The match reminded me what I like about the US Open. Night time matches. There's nothing like that kind of pressure, in an illuminated fish bowl in front of 20,000 people. It's downright gladiatorial and it's what made Andre and Pete so good. And Connors too. You can make people really question themselves, how much they want to win, how willing they are to get beat up, in front of an audience like that.
The draws are shaping up fairly predictably. Gasquet withdrew because of fever, letting Donald Young through. So far Baghdatis, Ferrero, and Gasquet are the quality early exits. Berdych, Djokovic, Roddick, and Davydenko are cruising through the draw.
So is Federer, who gets to play Isner today. It should be a wonderful spectacle, even if it's a rout. Watching Jedi master R Fed with his blast shield on, waving his wand at Isner's invisible serve. I can't wait. There is something about Isner I really like. He's a backyard athlete. You can tell by the way he moves he's used to winning and is probably very good at other sports. This won't help him against Roger, who may torture him sadistically from the back court like a cat with a field mouse, but it will stand him in good stead in the years to come.
In Rafa's bottom half, Hewitt, Youzhny, and Moya are all playing very good tennis. On the women's side, business as usual thus far and should be so for one more round, then the big girls will collide. Congrats to Hingis for working her way back. I'm really looking forward to the Venus Williams v. Ana Ivanovic match.
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