Triumph of the Underdogs

I have to admit that most of my focus has been on the West Coast tournaments this week, as some of the best men and women take to the courts of Los Angeles and Stanford, respectively. But I didn't mean to ignore some of the great matches still going on in Europe -- especially a couple of new faces making their mark.

Brazil's Marcos Daniel has already won three challenger events this year, and now in Gstaad he's trying to make his mark on the Tour. At thirty-one years of age he's not exactly a stranger to the circuit, but in the twelve years since he's gone pro he's never really made a dent. But last week in Indianapolis he avenged a loss to Taylor Dent at the Hall of Fame and he began his quest in Switzerland by notching a tight win over eighth seed Paul-Henri Mathieu and following it up today by defeating Julien Benneteau.

It marks only the second time this year he's scored back-to-back wins in a main draw. Next up for Daniel is Frenchman Florent Serra, a man who beat him easily in Memphis earlier this year. Obviously it will be a challenge for the #73 player in the world, but stranger things have happened.

Take, for example, the recent ascendancy of German Andrea Petkovic, the twenty-one year old who won her first Tour title last week in Bad Gastein. Before that tournament, she'd only won three matches in the big leagues -- ironically, all in Majors: the 2007 French and U.S. Opens and this year's Australian. But in Austria she won five in a row, only dropping one set to seventh seed Anna-Lena Groenefeld.

This week she's been equally impressive, losing only four games in her first two matches in Istanbul -- today she beat Paraguay's Rossana De Los Rios in under an hour, winning seventy percent of the points. Though she'll have to face her first seed of the tournament in the quarters, I'm not sure there's any reason for her to be intimidated by Olga Govortsova -- actually ranked lower than Andrea, Olga has lost both their previous matches and should be a fairly easy opponent.

It may be premature to call for her second straight title, but if Petkovic ever had an opportunity, this might be it.

Good luck to all!

A Perfect Record -- Where It Counts

Robby Ginepri is one of those also-ran American tennis players. He's been around for the better part of the decade, but never really reached the top tiers. Though he's made his was as high as #15 in the world, he's usually overshadowed by more prominent players like Andy Roddick and James Blake, and for the last few years he's slipped a few times into triple digits.

This year hasn't been that kind to him either. Before this week he'd only won a handful of games -- four to be exact -- and the best player he beat was #71 Andrey Golubev in Eastbourne. He came down with appendicitis, which kept him hospitalized for over a week, dropped thirty pounds and was sidelined for three months. When he came back in May, he lost all three of his World Team Championship matches in Dusseldorf, including one to #657 Andreas Vinciguerra.

But when he stepped on the courts in Indianapolis, something must've taken over him. It was here, four years ago, that Ginepri won his last title, defeating Andy Roddick on his way to the finals. It put him on the road to a great second half of the year -- he made the semis in Cincinnati, getting past Marat Safin, and Madrid, passing Nikolay Davydenko on the way. Most impressively, though, was his U.S. Open showing, where he played four consecutive five-set matches, eventually losing to Andre Agassi in yet another semi.

But potential opponents should know that, if Robby Ginepri makes it past that penultimate round, he's probably going to win. He did it in 2005 and he did it earlier today, when he was nothing short of spectacular in his win over third seeded Sam Querrey. In fact, he's never lost a championship match -- he's played in three during his career -- and if you watched him in action this afternoon, you can understand why. He kept his cool against the higher ranked favorite, controlled his shots and, surprisingly, out-aced the big serving Querrey. He was run all over the court, but played some really smart shots to break Sam not once, but twice in the opening set. And he stayed with him through the second, finally breaking Querrey late and winning his last service game, holding Sam at love.

Like Sam, Robby has a full summer schedule ahead of him, and he's scheduled to play Marat Safin in the first round in Los Angeles next week. It might be premature to say he's heading for the same run he had in 2005, but if he continues to play at the level he did this week, Ginepri is certainly off in the right direction. And maybe, with a little more luck, he'll be giving us all something to talk about this summer!

Summer of Sam

I first remember hearing Sam Querrey's name about two years ago when he forehanded his way into the top one hundred his first year as a pro.

Given his fast and consistent start, it's easy to forget that he's still really a kid. He was only nineteen when he made the semis at Indianapolis in 2007, beating big-serving Ivo Karlovic and countryman James Blake, both in three-set battles. He followed it up with a quarterfinal appearance in Cincinnati and a second place trophy in a challenger event in Vancouver.

He's had an up-and-down time since then, but never really fell out of good graces. He won his first and only championship -- so far -- in Las Vegas last March and reached the fourth round at the U.S. Open. But he's also notched a bunch of losses to much lower-ranked players like #137 Bjorn Phau and #194 Joseph Sirianni.

Even still, now just twenty-one years old, he's probably a much better player than his #37 ranking gives him credit for. A few weeks ago I got to watch him in the Newport semifinals, where he took on Fabrice Santoro on the grass courts of the Hall of Fame. I was impressed by his serve, of course -- at 6'6" he fired an amazing eighty aces during the tournament -- but also his finesse as he worked the court with long baseline rallies and delicate drop shots. Though he eventually lost in the finals to qualifier Rajeev Ram, he seemed to be making a statement.



And Querrey's going to be playing a lot of tennis this season in order to make that statement.

Today he sailed through the quarters in Indianapolis with a decisive win over France's Marc Gicquel. Though the scoreboard indicated a fairly close game -- 6-4, 7-5 -- Sam was dominant. He won 88% of his first serve points and only allowed two break opportunities, saving both of those points. In about ninety minutes, he score nineteen aces and easily earned his place in the semis, where he'll meet Canadian Frank Dancevic.

Even if his ride ends there, though -- which I hope it won't -- he won't have much time to rest. He's the eighth seed in Los Angeles next week and continues his summer-long road trip with showing in Washington, Cincinnati and New Haven, all before the end of August!

Luckily for Sam, it doesn't seem like he'll be alone. Like Mardy Fish's Fish Bowl and the J-Block before them, Querrey seems to have his own set of groupies -- his "Samurais" flew to Indianapolis from Santa Barbara and have been front-and-center during his matches all week.



If he continues the success he's had so far this season, it looks like they'll have a lot more to cheer for!

A Cast of Characters

On Monday two former #1s take the court in Los Angeles in the LA Tennis Open's "Millenium Challenge" -- fourteen-time Grand Slam winner Pete Sampras will meet Russian Marat Safin in a rematch of the 2000 U.S. Open final, what turned out to be Marat's first career Major victory.



The exhibition promises to be an exciting match -- while maybe not one of the classics, there was certainly a real rivalry between these two stars around the turn of the century. Safin, who has announced that 2009 will be his last year on the Tour, took the #1 ranking away from my dear Pete with the help of that win in Flushing Meadows, and he holds a surprising 4-3 record over the legend. While the two couldn't have more disparate personalities -- Marat often brash and combative when a point doesn't go his way, versus Pete who rarely showed any emotion on the court -- when they got on the court, you knew sparks would fly.

There aren't a lot of players on Tour now that have that same energy -- while Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are undoubtedly fascinating to watch, on the court they're all business. In a press conference today Safin was asked if he thought he was one of the last great characters in the sport. Marat seemed to think it was just a matter of time:

"Because tennis, actually they need somebody -- not a little bit not crazy, but just a little bit untender, but it has to come natural...Sooner or later it will come, people like that, and tennis will live another nice era."

Though he didn't offer any suggestions of who some of those players might be -- I'm not entirely sure he understood the follow-up question -- certain personalities do spring to mind.

There of course are the hot-heads: Tommy Haas and Lleyton Hewitt may have cooled off a bit in their old(er) age, but you can still see the fire in their eyes when they screw up. And more recently there was the odd -- and masochistic -- reaction from Mikhail Youzhny when he lost a point to Nicolas Almagro in Miami last year.



But now we have a bit more breadth in our emotions. Take the entertainers: Novak Djokovic and Gael Monfils always enjoy putting on a show. The heartthrobs: Andy Roddick and Dmitry Tursunov always manage to look good, no matter how hard they sweat. And the crowd-pleasers: Andy Murray and James Blake perpetually get the hometown fans behind them no matter how well or badly they're playing. And, most comforting, the ingenues -- the kids whose innocence and genuine happiness to win even one match is enough to get the entire crowd excited.



So I'm not worried about the personalities of tennis -- there are plenty of players bringing their personalities, either through charm or idiosyncrasies, out to the court with them. And it all just adds to the fun!

In the Fast Lane

Jeremy Chardy was just barely left out of the seedings at the Mercedes Cup in Stuttgart, a tournament which, as it turned out, was pretty evenly matched. At #43 in the world, he's barely a hundred points behind Jose Acasuso, the eighth seed who he met in the first round.

But arguably he's had the more successful year so far, and I'm not sure many people were surprised him to pull off the upset in his opening match. He made his first career final in Johannesburg in February, defeating David Ferrer in the semis before eventually losing to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. He'd beaten Tommy Haas in Delray Beach and Mardy Fish in Indian Wells -- I actually gave him more than a fighting chance against Andy Roddick in the first round at Wimbledon and was surprised that he lost so handily.

Chardy might have been a little annoyed too and seemed to come to Germany with something to prove. After taking out Mischa Zverev, who'd ousted top seed Gilles Simon in the second round, and former world #4 Nicolas Kiefer, Jeremy found himself facing Victor Hanescu for the title. Somehow he was able to brush off a 1-6 loss in the first set to not only level the match, but eventually win it, 6-4 in the final set.



It was his first championship trophy, but I think it's safe to say it won't be his last. Incidentaly he also won a brand new Mercedes E350, and I'm thinking it'll serve him well as he drives through his opponents during the rest of the summer.

He'll get his first chance to prove himself this week in Hamburg, where he has earned the fifteenth seed and a bye in the first round. Jeremy does face a tough draw, though, and more than a few people who've been making their names known this year are in his section of the bracket. Besides second-seeded Nikolay Davydenko, he could face Philipp Petzschner in the third round, or even force a rematch with Hanescu in the quarters.

It'll be hard, but now that Chardy's proven himself he's got to back it up! Nothing's more disappointing than watching such great talent fall back off into the shadows.

But I wish him the best of luck! And definitely will continue rooting for him!

The Case for New York

The USTA today announced the ten towns named as finalists for the first ever "Best Tennis Town" contest. The field was narrowed from an inital group of fifty-six cities, and now we all get to vote on the the one we think best captures the spirit and passion of our sport.

The contenders span the country, from North Carolina to Michigan to California. But, somewhat surprisingly, there's nothing in New York, the home of the last Grand Slam of the year -- nothing even in the northeast.

Okay, we don't have the best weather year-round, and like everything else in Manhattan it is always a process to get a court in Central Park.

Then again there is a real tennis community here. Every day during the summer, a line of regulars is queued up, some as early as five in the morning, at the Tennis Center as old friends catch up and share their picks for the current tournaments. Services like TennisTIP provide classes at various levels and help lone tennis players find hitting partners throughout the five boroughs. Monica Seles even thanked our former mayor David Dinkins, a Director at Large of the USTA, as her honorary coach when she was enshrined at the Tennis Hall of Fame last weekend.



And there's a boatload of history here. Since the early 1900s the first U.S. Tennis Championships were held in Forest Hills, initially on grass and then on clay. When the Open moved to the faster hard courts of Flushing Meadows in 1978, it brought with it all the excitement of the city's vibrant nightlife. While counterparts in Paris and London shut down at dusk, evening matches at Flushing Meadows often go past midnight, past one a.m., with crowds getting so rowdy I sometimes wonder if I'm at a sports arena or a sports bar.



Like with everything else in our lives, New York tennis players are hard core, true fans of both the sport and the atmosphere surrounding it -- we don't go down without a fight and we don't take crap from no one! And if that doesn't make this one of the best tennis towns in the States, I don't know what will!

Please...post your arguments for why your town is the best, and tell me who you think will win the USTA challenge!

Taking a Breather

We've reached that time in the tennis calendar where a lot of the top players are still sleeping off their Wimbledon hangovers and aren't yet ready to hit the pavement on the hard courts quite yet.

Rafael Nadal is of course recovering from his knee injury, but plans to make his summer debut in Montreal. Jim Courier told me last week that Roger Federer is taking some time as he prepares for impending fatherhood. Even Andy Roddick, who was supposed to get right back on court for the Davis Cup quarterfinals last weekend, had to pull out.

And that leaves a few weeks in the schedule for some lesser-known names to take advantage and rack up some points. So today I'm taking a look at some of the under-the-radar pros that have been able to stand out over the last week and a half.

Last Sunday Rajeev Ram, ranked in the triple-digits, became the first Lucky Loser this year to claim a Tour title when he battled through the qualifying rounds with a calf injury and defeated third seed Sam Querrey in the finals at Newport. The singles trophy was not only the first of his career, but also shaved seventy-three positions from his ranking.

And in Bastad, Sweden heavy favorite Caroline Wozniacki made her sixth final of the year -- pretty impressive, considering she's played in sixteen tournaments already. She must've been tired when she met Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez for the title, because she lost to the forty-second ranked Spaniard in straight sets.

This week the men took to the clay of Sweden, with Fernando Verdasco taking the top seed. Even still there are plenty of others ready to contend for the final.

Former top-ten player Guillermo Canas has seven career titles to his name, but has only won a handful of Tour-level matches this year. But in Bastad he pulled off a straight-set win over wildcard Grigor Dimitrov in the first round. Next he'll meet Andreas Vinciguerra, who has seen his ranking fall from #33 in the early part of the decade to #460 (!!) now. Andreas was able to score himself an upset over sixth seed Florent Serra, marking only his second match win on the Tour in 2009.

And in Stuttgart another Lucky Loser is trying to make his presence known. When Albert Montanes had to withdraw with a knee injury, Alexandre Sidorenko took his place. The Frenchman has only played one non-challenger match this year -- he lost in Roland Garros to Marat Safin. In fact the relative youngster hasn't yet won a single Tour match. But this week he managed a victory over qualifier Daniel Munoz-de La Nava and followed it up by sending home Oscar Hernandez. He'll have a battle in the next round against Victor Hanescu, but why shouldn't he have a fighting shot?

After all this is the best opportunity some of these guys have had -- or will have -- in a long time. And what better way to start their road to Flushing Meadows than by making a statement now?