Your 2006 United States Open (of Tennis)

Safin lurking in r2 for an increasingly unconvincing Bandy, and Baghdatis for Andre. It could be all over by Thursday for Agatha.

Roddick's recent sweep back into something like his summer '03 form turns my stomach and there don't appear to be many obstacles in his way here. Quarters, probably. And with a r1 loss dropping off his record from last year, his flirtation with life outside the top 10 is probably over for a good while. Great while it lasted, like Becker flailing around in the teens in late '93. Still, he may not make the Masters Cup, which would be amusing.

Poussis vs Nadal too!

pretty balanced draws - not many striking early round matches. lots and lots of players who are coming into this injured.

not only is serena unseeded, she needed a wildcard to get in! the quarter she's landed in is loaded - mauresmo, hingis, ivanovic (who just thrashed the field in montreal, inc hingis in the final), safina. sharapova has a pretty good draw - everyone in her section is injured or just returning from injury. in the next, kuznetsova and dementieva are both playing pretty well, and in the last i don't think davenport or schnyder will be enough to beat double-h.

Brit punters be stupid.

a lot of the young guns appear to be coming into their own - berdych, djokovic, and especially gasquet. the atp tour is in ridiculously good health at the moment.

All the meeja about this event in Oz so far today has centred around Agassi's Last Stand, a sad symptom of the current state of Australian tennis. It is entirely likely that AA will still be in the tournament to see off the last Australian.

Henners plays the dreaded Rusedski for the right to get monstered by Federer, while Murray gets his first seeding and a dream draw. The 'changing of the guard' cliche has a certain inevitability. But I'd be gobsmacked if the haggis-muncher justifies his 4th-favoritism by making the semis.

but we also have tix for weds. nite, which is supposed to be good weather. :)

weds. night looks like we'll get to see sharapova, and then roddick. neither one likely to be exciting, altho andy's eminently capable of an early flameout.

How cruel would it be for Agassi's career to be ended by a B Becker? I still have nightmares about that Wimbledon semifinal, y'know - I can see Boris in his chair at 2-6 1-4, looking utterly shellshocked, like the Liverpool players going down with cramp in stoppage time at 2-3 vs West Ham in May. Finished...but...no.

Let's hope for a repeat of the of the Flushing Meadows AA-BB matches from Flushing Meadow '90 and '95.

(That's if the Great Expectorater lasts that long. I know Phillippoussis has dragged his rating back to the nose-bleed heights of 120-something but you'd still expect better from a potential finalist.)

(Did Poop really give Nadal that much of a match? I got the impression it was fairly straightforward.)

Having to content myself with YouTube clips of Agatha-Baggy where you can't see the ball..

He declared himself available for the next Davis Cup tie. A grateful nation let out a sigh of relief.

Also - three Swiss lads in the third round! Fedz, obviously, Stan, slightly less obviously, and Marco Chiudinelli, who managed to out-hassle Flicka over five sets and gets to face Gasket for his troubles.

A pair of men's r3 matches still to be tidied up but, by the end of tomorrow, we'll be back on track.

Can BB upset Roddd at his own game, a la ToJo a couple of years ago?

katarina srebotnik (aka nu-lisa raymond) choked a 6-3 3-1 lead, and then two match points, against big dave.

i am very happy that either anna chakvetadze or tatiana golovin will get to the quarters!

very relieved that there was no opportunity for schmaltzy sick-making handing-over-torch agassi/dickhead match. slightly concerned over who is going to beat dickhead though (was counting on baghdatis, booooo). gasquet in the quarters, hopefully.

I think Roddick would, unfortunately, beat Nadal on hard courts right now. Nadal was hardly impressive during the summer and has faced no one of consequence yet. Then again neither has Roddick.

must say, the hingis loss last week was a real shocker. virginie razzano???? ffs martina.

Currently: Fat Bob is doing his gosh-darnedest to come back from two sets down against Funky Haas - he took the third 6-3 and was 4-1 up in the fourth. currently serving for 5-3. Jiri Novak is providing the expected amount of resistance to Rafa, currently 6-1 1-2 behind (w/serve). Micka Youse is currently leading Sixth Seed Tommy Robredo, who is seeded sixth, 6-2 3-0.

both serena and ivanovic played well, and there's talk of serena being the favorite tonight, but we are merkins who put Serena and Blake on the show court while Fed and Mesmo play next door.

i saw in various places that people were trumpeting serena's massive head-to-head lead over amelie as evidence that she was the favourite - but all results were a) before amelie won 2 slams and b) when serena was good, and not fat! amelie through 6-4 0-6 6-2.

isn't safin supposed to be suffering the after-effects of concussion at the moment? he was in a car accident a couple of weeks ago! marat safin: the only man who plays better with a head injury than without.

really looking forward to golovin v sharapova, and i hope golovin can finish what she started in miami earlier this year.

(fyi: miami semi-final, sharapova takes 6-3 5-1 lead. golovin saves match points, fights back to 5-4! sharapova takes obviously tactical bathroom break, gets booed. golovin takes second set anyway - sharapova immediately takes another bathroom break! and gets booed again! third set is all square and very high quality when golovin takes a horrid fall - v obviously serious as she is crying and writhing in pain on ground. sharapova reacts not by asking how she is but by jogging up and down and practising her serve! golovin gets stretchered off, sharapova gets booed off for being an inhuman robot. sharapova gets mashed in the final the next day by kuznetsova.

...so, overall, ALLEZ TATIANA.)

hewitt v roddick YUCK YUCK YUCK. is it possible for neither to win?

Amelie Mauresmo v Dinara Safina
Maria Sharapova v Tatiana Golovin
Jelena Jankovic v Elena Dementieva
Lindsay Davenport v Justine Henin-Hardenne

i basically heart everyone left except shaz'n'dave. once they're sorted - and JHH should do the job on dave with ease - i'm in seventh heaven. woo!

(aside from the Agassi Chronicles)

perhaps euai was speaking as an American tv producer?

i'm trying to ignore safin because any emotional investment in his matches is v v unwise, even if he is my favourite.

at least bloody nastya saved me all the pain by getting herself kicked out in round 1! (apparently injured though, so she isn't JUST sucking.)

she's playing really well at the moment - her year's been bizarre, she lost 10 matches in a row at the start of the year and then suddenly turned it round just before roland garros - and since then she's been very, very consistent, and in recent weeks (straight-setting serena a couple of weeks before the us open!) positively stellar. she's a bit of a diva on court too.

safin a set up but a break down to haas.

vote monty!

We will not, however, be having our third "dream final" of the year...Nadal, edged out in a breaker in the 3rd vs Youzhny, has fallen apart in the 4th and trails 0-5.

Come on Lleyton!

(I'm sorry, a Federer-Roddick final the same weekend as the Everton-Liverpool derby would do me in. A good-evil double-header).

also, what's up with the Champions' matches? I was happy to see Maggie Maleeva on the schedule, but it seemed she got rained out and hasn't been rescheduled.

BATTLE OF THE HORSEFACED TITANS!!!

JHH has won her last four vs Maria, but I wonder...

Davydenko-Youzhny final on Sunday!

could someone please explain to American sportscasters in general and Dick Enberg in particular that there is no one named "Justine Henna-Hardenne," or if there is, she doesn't play professional tennis?

i wonder if there'll be caviling about all that weird coaching from the stands. but she played close to perfect.

I really hope there's no such upset in the men's final. Three swift sets for Federer, please.

Likewise with Roddick - I really dread him winning tournaments, it makes me feel ill. Like Liverpool winning trophies. I thought he was very lucky to win this event three years ago (he seemed to benefit from various scheduling decisions as the rain-induced backlog grew), and was down a match-point vs Bandy in the semis. At the Masters Cup in Houston, again, Roddick (and Agassi) seemed to be given preferential treatment (which made no difference when Federer smashed them back-to-back to win the thing). This consolidated my growing dislike of the guy (I know, neither incident was within his control) or, more accurately, his winning of tennis matches.

His one-dimensionality has been exposed this year, as he dropped to #12, and I almost started to wonder if the game "needed a good Roddick" but the Masters title in Cincinatti (where he nearly lost in r1 and then was untouchable) has brought back the waves of revulsion and I really hope he gets a good tanning tonight.

Sorry - doesn't make much sense.

I'm pretty sure I would have been firmly on McEnroe's side back in the rivalry days, but Connors seems to have evolved, so I feel somewhat good for him that Roddick is doing well.

I wonder if my favorite back-in-the-Chase driver, who looks not unlike Michael Jones, will be back in the stands this year with his rather beautiful, I now realize, new wife.

http://msn.foxsports.com/id/4989688_7_1.jpg

I totally can't hate Roddick that much. I don't actually mind him.

Are you absolutely sure about that? I guess maybe I just switch off these days when he speaks, but at first he was dull and made TERRIBLE jokes. Sorry, "jokes".

How's the tennis going?

I'm not watching the tennis. Neil is watching something about pirates. It's just started. Updates here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/tennis/5333246.stm

Which is why I'm getting jittery now - Roddick gets a break back.

STOP IT! NO IT'S NOT! This is not traumatising and horrendous!

Fed had a mid-match dip vs Agassi last year but that was against a 35-y-o who'd just come through consecutive five-setters; Roddick's level may drop but it won't be through fatigue.

Oh, the palaver I had trying to find a way to listen in bed to this - eventually took a portable CD-cassette thing up with Pam's chunky AKG headphones. Missed four games in the interim, so switched on at 5-5 15/0. Good time to rejoin it... And then found Pretzel Logic in the CD tray!

impressed with sharapova - at the start of the hard court season there were three players she had real trouble with, and very daunting head-to-heads against - clijsters, mauresmo and JHH. she beat clijsters in the san diego final, and then mauresmo and henin-hardenne back-to-back here, and all very convincingly. i wonder if this will kickstart a run of wins over those three for maria, or whether they are in the long run too smart for her.

roll of honour:

Men's singles: Roger Federer
Women's singles: Maria Sharapova
Men's doubles: Martin Damm and Leander Paes
Women's doubles: Nathalie Dechy and Vera Zvonareva
Mixed doubles: Bob Bryan and Martina Navratilova
Boys' singles: Dusan Lojda
Girls' singles: Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova
Boys' doubles: Jamie Hunt and Nathaniel Schnugg
Girls' doubles: Mihaela Buzarnescu and Raluca Olaru

- well done Vera!
- this is the third time Martina the Elder has retired and despite what she says I am yet to be convinced it is the last
- good, as ever, to note the ludicrous names of all the juniors