The outer courts were the place to be on Friday of Week 1, highlighted by a pair of five-setters. The first came on Court 17, which is technically a show court but still not on par (both in prestige and location) with Arthur Ashe, Louis Armstrong, and the Grandstand. Rajeev Ram went up two sets on Marcel Granollers, but the American began to wear down and it cost him the third and the fourth. Ram got re-energized for the fifth, but he still never served quite as big as necessary and too many weak slice backhands were handled without too much trouble by Granollers. The crowd favorite did well to hold easily en route to a 5-4 lead in the decider, but he finally dropped serve at 5-5. With the match on his racket, Granollers delivered one of the points of the tournament at 30-30. The Spaniard retrieved a perfect lob by Ram then answered a Ram overhead with a winning forehand cross-court pass. Granollers finished off his comeback victory one point later.
Another little-known American was locked in a five-setter on Court 11. Tim Smyczek came back from two sets to one down to beat American-turned-Russian Alex Bogomolov in an entertaining baseline battle. Smyczek gave back a break midway through the final frame of play, but a late injury doomed Bogomolov’s chances. He took a medical timeout in the middle of his service game at 4-4, got broken, then watched Smyczek easily serve out the match one game later.
Other outer-court happenings included Stanislas Wawrinka vs. Ivo Karlovic, Andreas Seppi vs. Somdev Devvarman, and mixed doubles featuring Mahesh Bhupathi and Martina Hingis. Karlovic had sent James Blake into retirement with a comeback from two sets down in the first round, but he was not much a match for Wawrinka. The big-serving Croat actually broke his opponent once in the first set, but he dropped his own serve twice, eventually lost a second-set tiebreaker, and it was all over after that. Devvarman put up a good fight against Seppi despite failing to take a set. A competitive opener produced one of the points of the tournament, when Devvarman faced set point in the tiebreaker and won what must have been a 50-ball rally during which both players seemed to have it won on multiple occasions. Seppi finally took it 10-8 and advanced 7-6(8), 6-4, 7-5. Playing at night, Bhupathi and Hingis went down to Robert Lindstedt and Yung-Jan Chan in a pair of tiebreakers. It’s safe to say, though, that Hingis still has it.
Action on Louis Armstrong Stadium included Andy Murray against Leonardo Mayer and the Bryan Brothers against Eric Butorac and Frederik Nielsen. Mayer accounted himself extremely well and even took the third set. Murray was not bad, himself, and for him the hiccup was nothing more than a wakeup call. The Scot recovered to take set four–and the match–amidst little drama. Bob and Mike Bryan were way too good for Butorac and Nielsen (mainly for Butorac, who did not have a good day at the office by any stretch of the imagination).
The Grandstand often hosts memorable thrillers, but everything was straightforward on Friday. Tommy Haas and Yen-Hsun Lu played a relatively weird match in which both men played terribly from ahead. Haas played well to go up breaks in every set, but he gave back at least one every time and sometimes two. Lu would repeatedly battle back from deficits only to collapse again whenever he was on serve. All in all it was a decent, up-and-down performance by Haas–still more than enough to get the job done. Donald Young had a good run through qualifying and a blowout of Martin Klizan in round one of the main draw, but Florian Mayer was not messing around. The German simply had too much variety for Young, who will once again go back to the drawing board as he attempts to get his career off the ground–only seven or eight years after liftoff was expected!
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