Category archive: Juan Martin del Potro
This past week was the lull before the storm. But, as always, the small tournaments presented a great opportunity for the have-nots, or have-somes, of the ATP and WTA to snatch up valuable ranking points, count coup on rivals, and build confidence. It will be interesting to see if any of that presumed confidence will have an impact at the marquee events in the pipeline.
Estoril WTA: How come Grand Slam tournaments don't seem able, except once in a blue moon, to produce finals like the one played out in the Portuguese parish of Estoril? Kia Kanepi won it over Carla Suarez Navarro after fending off match point twice in the second set. The winning score was 3-6, 7-6 (6), 6-4.
Kanepi, seeded just No. 6 at Estoril, won Brisbane early this year, surprising everyone. She's struggled with injury but is back in her comfort zone on clay. This was a pretty impressive statement that will put the WTA elite on their toes.
Estoril ATP: The men were unable to come up with the same degree of drama as the women, but the star power was present and accounted for. Juan Martin del Potro, the 2009 U.S. Open champion who's just 23 and back to No. 11 in the world, downed the mercurial and talented Richard Gasquet of France in an 88-minute final, 6-4, 6-2. It was a successful title defense for delPo, who will benefit from the confidence and has shown he can play the clay game with anyone.
Budapest WTA: For some time now, Italy has been punching above its weight when it comes to producing WTA talent. The latest one is Sara Errani, who has won the past three clay-court tournaments she's played (Acapulco, Barcelona, Budapest), which adds up to a 15-match winning streak.
Errani has put up some some eyebrow-raising wins in those events. (Among her victims: Germany's Julia Goerges and two of her countrywomen in back-to-back matches in Acapulco, Roberta Vinci and Flavia Pennetta.) In Budapest, she won the final over Elena Vesnina, 7-5. 6-4.
Prediction: Errani will send shock waves through tennis before the Euroclay segment ends at Roland Garros.
Munich ATP: Philipp Kohlschreiber, ranked No. 34 before the event, won the title at Munich for the second time with a 7-6 (8), 6-3 win over the No. 3 seed, Marin Cilic.
It's a great thing to win what might be called your home tournament (although Kohlschreiber actually hails from Augsburg, Germany). But to accomplish that twice, with half-a-decade in between, and with a resonant upset each time (his victim in 2007 was Mikhail Youzhny), well, it just doesn't get much better than that.
Kohlschreiber is an interesting player with a versatile, tricky game. He's arcing upward and approaching the career-high ranking of No. 22 that he attained in 2009. He knows that at 28, he's closer to the end of his career than the beginning. Count on him to log at least one big upset before the end of the French Open.
Belgrade ATP: It was a great week all around for Italy as Andreas Seppi, the ATP No. 46 last week, joined Errani as a tournament winner. But though Errani has won three titles in less than half the year, this is just career title No. 2 for Seppi.
Seppi triumphed over 22-year-old Frenchman Benoit Paire, a first-time finalist, 6-3, 6-2. Seppi is 28 and enjoying the fruits of a long career, and at No. 32 he's now just five ranking places out from his career best of No. 27.
But the guy to watch in the coming weeks is Paire. Young and ranked a lowly 96th coming into Belgrade, Paire was the underdog in every match he played. At 6-foot-5, Paire can bring the serve, but his favorite surface is clay, and he has an excellent backhand.
Milos Raonic and del Potro won't be the only towering players whom the elite top 10 of the ATP will have to be wary of in the coming weeks.
5. Rafael Nadal d. Andy Roddick, U.S. Open quarterfinals, 6-2, 6-2, 6-3.
You have to go all the way back to 2008 to find a more lopsided score in the history between these two players (Nadal leads the head-to-head, 7-3), but that's not the main reason this was such a discouraging match for U.S. tennis fans.
That Roddick was unable to put up more resistance on what is basically his home court, and the one on which he won his long Grand Slam title, could be taken as an omen that Roddick, 29, just doesn't have enough left in the tank to keep his familiar place in the top 10. And that's bad news for U.S. tennis, despite the way Mardy Fish recently has picked up some of the slack.
4. Samantha Stosur d. Li Na, round robin of WTA Championships, 6-1, 6-0.
Sure it's great that Asia finally has a Grand Slam champ in Li, who not only won the French Open but came awfully close to winning the first major of the year as well. And though we know Li tends to have a major letdown after big tournaments, she was in with a shot to qualify for the knockout semifinals of the prestigious year-end championships when she met Stosur in the third round of the round robin. That Li caved so thoroughly at the last event of the year, on an indoor hard surface that suits her game, and got just one measly game off Stosur was a real downer.
3. Juan Martin del Potro d. Novak Djokovic, Davis Cup semifinals, 7-6, 3-0 ret.
This was the beginning of the end of one of the great stories in all of the Open era. It began with Djokovic's early-season winning streak, continued with his mastery of Nadal on the Spanish then-No. 1's beloved clay and hit a peak at the U.S. Open, where new No. 1 Djokovic won his third major of the year and positioned himself to threaten John McEnroe's record winning percentage (.965 on an 82-3 mark in 1984).
But just a week after the Open, Djokovic had to quit (lower-back injury), and defending champ Serbia was knocked out of the Davis Cup by del Potro and his Argentine teammates. Djokovic was not the same for the remainder of the year and ended up a still brilliant but woozy 70-6 on the year.
2. Rafael Nadal d. Roger Federer, Miami Masters semifinal, 6-3, 6-2.
It was early in the year, and while Djokovic had won the Australian Open and the Indian Wells Masters, the Federer-Nadal rivalry was still the major story in men's tennis. Thus it was that much more surprising when, in an electric atmosphere on a sultry night in Miami, the fans packed into the stadium at Crandon Park got to witness nothing more exciting than a mercy killing. Federer simply didn't have his A-game. Or his B-game. Or his C-game. He had nothing.
However, it would be remiss of me not to mention that Federer basically turned the tables on Nadal some seven months later, when he crushed Nadal at the ATP World Tour Finals, 6-3, 6-0. That's how it is with these two guys.
1. Sam Stosur d. Serena Williams, U.S. Open final, 6-2, 6-3
Although this is a legitimate highlight of the year, not to mention a career high point for first-time Grand Slam champion Stosur, that controversy over the chair umpire's decision to punish Williams for screaming during a point, and Williams' subsequent meltdown, dominated the news and ruined what ought to have been a celebration of the surprising skill and will that Stosur brought to the match.
It was a jarring, discordant way to end the WTA Grand Slam year. The prohibitive and popular favorite Williams played mediocre tennis, got ugly and crashed out and thus failed to win a Grand Slam title for the first time in five years. It left a bad taste in the mouth of everyone but Stosur, who was content to know that when it really counted, she finally delivered against the formidable Serena.
A change of surface at a tournament, a rainout, the switch to a new and different ball, the emergence of a new star or the resurgence of a veteran can all have a significant effect on the way things work out. The X factor in tennis right now is Juan Martin del Potro.
Del Potro hadn't hit a ball at an ATP tournament since the U.S. Open until he started in Stockholm this past Thursday. It was mildly surprising that he skipped all the Asian events; maybe he decided the karma is bad for him across the Pacific after he lost a pair first-rounders there last year (Bangkok and Tokyo) and promptly pulled the plug on what turned out to be a premature comeback.
DelPo couldn't have expected too much of himself at those fall of 2010 events, given that he hadn't played at all since January of that year because of a wrist injury that required surgery. But he came on strong again in 2011, until a disappointing summer left him high and dry at his present ranking of No. 15. Weeks ago, he declared that he skipped the Asian circuit because he wanted to prepare for the Davis Cup final.
Spain will host Argentina in that Davis Cup final, the last official tennis event of the year, in early December on an indoor clay court in Seville, Spain. But don't get the idea that Delpo locked himself away in some indoor facility to work on his clay-court game. He's got a full plate of indoor hard-court events on his docket -- so much so that you wonder if he won't have shot his wad by the time the Davis Cup final rolls around.
DelPo, who lost to James Blake in Stockholm, will play in Vienna, Valencia and the final Masters 1000 event of the year, the Paris Indoors. That is, he doesn't have a single week off until the end of Paris. And if he qualifies for Paris, he'll have just one week of rest before facing Rafael Nadal & Co. on clay in Seville. To me, it sounds like DelPo is preparing for the ATP World Tour Finals, not the Davis Cup.
Presently, DelPo is four places out from qualifying for the elite eight, who will clash in London's O2 Arena come Nov. 20. But he's been as ranked as high as No. 4, has won a major, and he's already neck-and-neck with all the players below No. 8, where Jo-Wilfried Tsonga sits with a significant cushion (with 2790 ranking points, he leads DelPo by some 700-plus points -- a significant but not insurmountable margin). DelPo has no points to defend, while Tsonga has just 90.
Should DelPo win Vienna (ATP 250) and Valencia (ATP 500), he'll be in a dead heat with Tsonga going into the big Paris indoors tournament. But though DelPo's drive to qualify for the year-end championships is the main storyline, he could play a significant role in a few of the other narratives.
DelPo has enough power and range to hurt No. 1 Novak Djokovic. Nadal hasn't exactly been himself this year, and DelPo once put together a three-match hard-court win streak over the No. 2 (it included a win in the U.S. Open semis). And, of course, he hammered Roger Federer in the 2009 U.S. Open final, and later that year at the World Tour Finals as well (Delpo is 2-1 against Federer in their past three meetings on hard courts).
Sometimes it's hard to sustain interest in tennis as the year winds down in Asia and Europe, which is why it's good to have an X factor in play. Del Potro is armed for bear. He's 6-foot-6 and he owns a 100 mph-plus forehand and a big serve. That's not just an X factor -- that's an XL factor.
1. Caroline Wozniacki: She's been No. 1 since October of last year but has yet to win a Grand Slam event. Sure she's just 21 years old, and while it's cool to be old in the WTA these days, windows of opportunity can close -- and fast. Tongues wag more boldly with each passing Slam Wozniacki fails to win (thereby justifying that No. 1 ranking), and no player on earth can ignore -- or enjoy -- that kind of pressure (just ask Dinara Safina). Wozniacki made the final at Flushing Meadows in her breakout year of 2009. Last year, she stumbled in the semis. If she doesn't win this thing, her credibility as a first-tier champ will take another major, perhaps fatal hit.
2. Andy Roddick: Maybe it's just me, but it seems like just yesterday Roddick was a bankable top-five player, yet he's seeded No. 22 because he has quietly fallen out of the top 20 in the course of a year that can only be described as "miserable." Roddick needs to stop the bleeding and end his Grand Slam year on an up-note, otherwise people will start tossing around the "R" word. Roddick is most dangerous at Wimbledon. On the other hand, this is the only major he's won, and as a patriotic dude, he will want and need to take full advantage of the sentiment dividend. It's time to get inspired and salvage a grim year.
3. Rafael Nadal: He's the defending champion, but has anyone else noticed how all the talk about Nadal perhaps eclipsing Federer as the most prolific Grand Slam champion has died down? In fact, the silence on the front is deafening. The bad news for Nadal is that Novak Djokovic is in his head. The good news is Nadal knows it and seems to have tackled the problem directly. Nadal has had foot problems since Wimbledon, but he claims he's feeling fit and fresh. He needs to stop the Djokovic juggernaut, or risk basing too much of his legacy on the red clay of Paris.
4. Serena Williams: Sure she's earned her spurs, and we discuss her career and talent with the reverential tones we reserve for the Federers, Henins, Nadals and Grafs of this world. That also means that for Serena, it's all about the Grand Slams, and it has been over a year since she won her last major. Serena hasn't won here since 2008, and this is, after all, her home tournament. Nobody knows just how much longer she can miss large chunks of the year then jump right back into the fray to dominate. Her performance at the Open will go a long way toward answering the question.
5. Juan Martin del Potro: He's the least "at-risk" player in this group. Still, two months ago, it looked as if Delpo was perfectly positioned to realize his ambition to be fully ready for the U.S. Open -- where he's sort of a defending champion (he hasn't lost a match here since he won the title in 2009, having missed last year's event because of injury). Unfortunately, Delpo hasn't been entirely convincing during the hard-court season. He lost in straight sets (to Marin Cilic) in Montreal and in the second-round (after his first-round opponent retired) at Cincinnati to Federer (the man Delpo beat for his '09 title in New York).
Delpo is just 22 and has plenty of time to recover his 2009 form. And he needs to do that to prove he wasn't just another youngster who rode a wave of emotion and energy to an unlikely Grand Slam triumph. Delpo's ambitions are complicated by the fact that he's seeded only No. 18 and may have to beat Robin Soderling, Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal (in that order) to make the final.
Juan Martin del Potro may know that feeling as well, come U.S. Open time, for his promised drive to cap his comeback with a strong showing in Flushing is already gaining momentum even though the American Grand Slam doesn't begin for another month.
The 6-foot-6, 22-year-old from Tandil, Argentina, opened his U.S. hard-court campaign the other night in Los Angeles, where del Potro is seeded No. 2 behind Mardy Fish. Before he played his first match, he told reporters, "I am very excited to come back to New York. If I could start to play tomorrow I would."
Not so fast, big man.
The degree of enthusiasm del Potro is bringing to the table is bad news for many of his rivals, particularly the man he defeated for the title in 2009, Roger Federer. But it's not great news for Rafael Nadal, either. For it's an open secret that until Novak Djokovic came along, the players Nadal most feared (as opposed to "respected") were the big men who could smother him with their power and render his athletic gifts moot.
DelPo is back up No. 19 in the world this week, and he has some time to improve on that ranking (and thereby elevate his U.S. Open seeding). People in the game are talking about him; he continues to grow and loom on the horizon, like a massive, dark thunderhead in the summer. "It has been a very long while since my wrist injury," DelPo said, sounding a warning perhaps without even meaning to. "Now I'm OK and getting better with my tennis, with my mind, and all my problems are in the past. I still believe in my game. I'm very confident with my level at this moment."
So let's take a look at his record against the big three of the game:
No. 3 Roger Federer: The head-to-head advantage belongs to Federer, 6-2. But del Potro won their past two meetings -- one in the U.S. Open final of '09 and another later in the year at the ATP Tour Championships. Given the frazzled state of Federer's game these days during key moments in a match, you have to like DelPo's chances. At 22, he's hungry in a way Federer is not and may never be again.
No. 2 Rafael Nadal: DelPo is 3-6 against Nadal, but that's about as deceptive a stat as you can find in tennis. Nadal collected three of those wins this year, relatively early in DelPo's comeback from nearly a full year out of action due to a right wrist injury and surgery. Delpo has said from the get-go that his game plan was to get himself in shape to contend during the U.S. hard-court season, culminating at the U.S. Open. If anything, he's ahead of schedule. And before Nadal took those three wins this year, DelPo won three in a row -- all of them on hard courts, all of them in the U.S. (at Miami, Montreal and New York en route to that Open title).
No. 1 Novak Djokovic: This is a toughie for the big man, no doubt about it. Djokovic holds a 4-0 advantage over DelPo, even though they've played but once since 2009. That match was in Paris, where Djokovic won a routine four-setter.
At 24, Djokovic is just two years older; both men are still on an upward arc. More important, Djokovic's game matches up well with Delpo's. He's one of the few players who probably can handle the big man's firepower without resorting to completely defensive tennis. On history if not rankings, I see del Potro versus Djokovic as the most likely U.S. Open final.
It's a long way to Arthur Ashe Stadium, but you know how it is with a big man. You can see him coming from a mile away.
The European clay-court circuit, the second segment of the Grand Slam year, begins in earnest Tuesday for the ATP at Monte Carlo. The men have really built something valuable and durable in this circuit; I think of it as the "Roland Garros Series," a more successful version of what the USTA has tried to create with its U.S. Open Series.
So let's look at three players who have the most to gain during the tournaments leading up to and including the French Open:
Novak Djokovic, ATP No. 2: Nothing can diminish the credibility of his 24-0 start to 2011, especially because it occurred on a specific surface -- the most common surface, in fact, for the game.
But a strong clay-court season featuring a Masters title and -- dare we think it? -- a triumph over Nadal somewhere along the way would really help his cause, because you need to be able to beat Nadal on clay just as much as you need to beat Roger Federer on grass, or it's hard to prove you've got the chops to be No. 1. Djokovic also could wipe away questions about his stamina with a great clay-court season.
Nadal is 5-0 against Djokovic on clay in the spring (excluding matches at Roland Garros), although their last meeting was that Madrid epic of 2009, in which Nadal only squeaked by 7-6 (9) in the third. Djokovic's decision to skip Monte Carlo with a bad knee (of which there was no sign when he won at Miami just a week ago) suggests that he's resting and gearing up for a push.
Andy Murray, ATP No. 4: Murray could not only benefit from a good clay-court season, he absolutely needs one to balance out the horrible way he's played since his straight-sets loss to Novak Djokovic in the Australian Open final.
The problem is that Murray, like Djokovic, is at his best on hard courts. And having played so poorly on that surface, he squandered a lot of the capital he might have saved for a rainy day in Europe, where the clay plays especially slow when it's damp. Murray has a been a patsy for clay-courters in the David Ferrer mold (Ferrer had back-to-back wins over Murray in the Rome and Madrid Masters last year); heck, Murray has even lost to James Blake on clay (Hamburg).
Until now, Murray never has had to do well on clay because of his hard-court prowess. He's got enough game to contend on the surface, but is he willing to grind? He'll have to, in order to retain his status.
Juan Martin del Potro, No. 45: We all know that del Potro, who missed almost all of 2010 because of complications (including surgery) with an injured right wrist, is already far better than that No. 45 ranking suggests. But a good clay-court season will really position him to make a run this summer on the hard courts, where he's been a Grand Slam champion (U.S. Open, 2009) and collected enough wins to hit a career-high No. 4.
DelPo is only 5-3 for his career on the spring European circuit, but he was a semifinalist at the French Open in 2009, the first time this now 22-year-old youth survived the second round. The big issue for DelPo is likely to be stamina; since he's really just back this year, will he be able to handle the workload on clay? With no rankings points to defend, he will at least be playing without any pressure whatsoever.
For days now, tennis fans (most particularly, fans of Roger Federer) have been grousing about the draw the gods of Indian Wells bestowed upon Federer's great rival, Rafael Nadal.
Lest you haven't been reminded in the past 15 minutes or so, Nadal played nothing but qualifiers on his way to the quarterfinals (as if he weren't already a Freddy Krueger character in the eyes of that segment of tennis society). It's a record of some sort, if not quite the same as holding 16 majors. As it turns out, the gods have a sense of humor, and they proved it by putting Ivo Karlovic into Nadal's path Thursday night.
Karlovic is not a qualifier, unless you want to apply that label to the stars in the World's Most Dangerous Serve reality show (where Karlovic is regularly joined by the likes of Andy Roddick, John Isner and Ivan Ljubicic). And that spelled trouble for Nadal. For he's always a little nervous before playing a guy who can shut him down with a formidable serving display.
Nadal loves to play, in the most literal sense of the word. Like a puppy or a spirited horse, he's at his best when he's at full gallop, chasing something butterfly -- or optic -- yellow. Tie him up to the fence and he begins to get nervous, and pretty soon he's chewing the leash -- or the inside of his own mouth.
Last year at Indian Wells, Nadal was stretched to 6-3 in the third in his fourth-round battle with Isner; in his press conference afterward, he praised the strapping American to high heaven: "He is very dangerous player, no? Maybe will make a top player, really top player, no? But dangerous, always with dangerous, no? You know, when you have one serve like this -- better don't just talk more. Because if he improves just a little bit more, gonna be very difficult to stop him, no?"
Big servers scare Nadal. They can smother and stifle him, impose a glacial pace on the match, take away his timing and end points before a runner and gunner like Nadal feels they've really begun.
When Nadal was asked to compare Isner and Karlovic, he made some interesting points and fine distinctions. He said Isner's second serve is superior, and while Karlovic's first serve is harder to return, per se, the thing that makes Isner's so poisonous is that if you don't find his backhand with the return, he can punish you more forcefully than can Karlovic with the next shot.
In other words, Isner can drop the big bomb, backpedal way over to the backhand side and club a huge inside-out forehand drive off your return. That's something against which even Nadal's excellent speed and agility are sometimes powerless.
Nadal survived Isner last year, but remember that he ultimately lost the final to another of the bombardiers of the game, Ljubicic. Last night, he got by Karlovic, but just barely, playing a solid tiebreaker (Karlovic was never ahead in the final tiebreaker score, and lost the match 5-7, 6-1, 7-6 (7). Karlovic, incidentally, hit 23 aces to Nadal's six.
But now Nadal will be going up against another Ljubicic-esque guy who can bring a fair amount of heat, even though he has so many tools that his serve doesn't particularly stand out. Juan Martin del Potro doesn't put on Karlovic-esque serving displays (although he did have 13 aces in his last, two-set win), but he can be just as imposing, just as preemptive. We saw that in the way he took care of Federer and snatched away the U.S. Open title in 2009.
Don't think that Nadal isn't worried about Delpo, who's always given him fits. Somewhere, the gods are smiling.
Call Juan Martin del Potro the X factor for the upcoming U.S. Open. He's the defending champ, and the guy who first demonstrated that if you play a sufficiently big, physical game, you can take down the Roger Federers and Rafael Nadals of this world (Robin Soderling and Tomas Berdych clearly were paying attention).
As few as two weeks ago, del Potro's prospects for playing at Flushing Meadows looked dim. But now, the news out of Argentina is that del Potro has recovered from the surgery on his right wrist, is hitting tennis balls and is on track to defend his title in late August.
That ought to give the top contenders the heebie-jeebies.
When del Potro manhandled Federer in the final of the U.S. Open last September, it seemed like an epoch-ending match. For the first time in a big match on a surface other than clay, Federer met a man who could play him on Federer's terms and still win. It was no one-off performance, either. In the two previous rounds, del Potro had knocked off Marin Cilic and Nadal.
And del Potro backed up that inspired U.S. Open triumph. In the ensuing weeks and months, he beat Federer again and put up a good win over hard-charging Soderling. His year-end head-to-heads looked like this:
Vs. Federer: 2-0 in the latter half of '09, despite trailing 0-6 after his loss to Federer at Roland Garros in the spring.
Vs. Nadal: 3-0 in '09 after Indian Wells, where his record slipped to 0-4.
Vs. Andy Murray: 1-5, with two losses to Murray on hard courts in the summer. Del Potro's crafted his lone win over Murray in Madrid (on clay) in the spring.
Vs. Novak Djokovic: 0-3 -- but no matches after Rome.
Vs. Andy Roddick: 2-0 in '09 and 3-0 in his career in two finals and one semi.
Del Potro took the big step into the first tier of players during the hard-court season. The only guy who still appeared to have del Potro's number by the end of last year was Murray. And Djokovic, who's showing signs of resurgence, is a big question mark.
Murray, a former U.S. Open finalist, looms as the main, proven stumbling block to del Potro when he returns -- if del Potro can muster the kind of tennis he was playing at this time last year.
That's a big "if." Del Potro hasn't hit a ball in competition since January, and he isn't the kind of player who is likely to benefit from the extra rest provided by his enforced absence. In fact, del Potro is just 21 and is blessed with Ironman propensities. Remember, he first appeared on the radar in 2008, when he won four straight events at the most demanding time of year -- in the summer, after Wimbledon.
That streak was a testament to his versatility, too. He won the first two titles on clay and shifted to his preferred hard courts without missing a beat. He won in Los Angeles and Washington and showed no signs of slowing down until Murray (him again!) finally quelled the del Potro insurgency in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open.
A year later in New York, del Potro won the title.
The Argentine likes to go on rolls; it appears to build his confidence. His results in 2008 were impressive, but that win at Flushing Meadows last year didn't come out of the thin air, either. He won Washington and lost in the final of Cincinnati in the two events he played before the U.S. Open.
The big question is not whether del Potro will be able to play in the U.S. Open, but whether he'll get enough matches before the event to be at his best. I'm predicting that he'll play at least one event before he defends his title, and the news that he's hitting balls again supports the idea that he'd like to get a little match play under his belt before the last major of the year.
But consider this: The guy who beat del Potro in the final at Cincinnati last year was … you guessed it, Andy Murray.
So the X factor has an X factor of his own with which to contend.
The American hard-court season received two pieces of good news these past few days, one of them coming from all the way down on the Pampas -- if Juan Martin del Potro's hometown of Tandil is in fact anywhere near the great plains of Argentina.
First, Andy Roddick accepted a wild card into the maiden ATP Tour event (the ATP 250 begins next week) in Atlanta, Ga. It's about time that Atlanta, the most tennis-crazed, tennis-conscious city in the U.S., had a pro tournament again. And it's appropriate for a star of Roddick's status to help inaugurate it. I always felt that the U.S. Open Series was a great idea, although the global shift of power and the declining level of player commitment during the USO Series has diluted the product.
Del Potro's recent declaration that he hopes to be back in action to help Argentina survive the Davis Cup semifinal round (which is played right after the U.S. Open) is also a pleasant surprise. Just weeks ago, he was still looking at the fall indoor season as his potential date of return. Del Potro suggested he might even be available to defend his title in Flushing Meadows, saying, "Davis Cup is a good date for returning to tennis, but I hope I can come back sooner."
There's a connection between these two items, and although it's tenuous, it's still fun to think about. Del Potro has been the missing X factor in tennis this year. The guy was 0-6 against Roger Federer as of last August, but he overwhelmed Federer in the U.S. Open final of 2009, then showed it was no fluke when he also hammered Federer at the World Tour Championships in London a few months later. Those two wins were both on hard courts -- one outdoors, one indoors.
Rafael Nadal beat del Potro the first four times they played, but del Potro has torn apart Nadal in their past three meetings, all in 2009, all on hard courts. The message at the end of last year was clear: Tennis had a new potential game-changer, especially on his preferred hard courts.
In fact, del Potro is the paragon for an entire class of player that has given fits to the two men who have dominated the tour in recent years, Federer and Nadal. Robin Soderling and Tomas Berdych are built on a similar platform and play a game more alike than different from Delpo's. That the towering, 6-foot-6 baseline slugger has been sidelined by an awful wrist injury since early this year may be the greatest single factor in Grand Slam results this year (Nadal has won two, Federer took the other).
We don't know what the future holds in store for Delpo. Confidence and routine play enormous roles in tennis, and no player in his right mind assumes that he's going to return to his or her previous form after an extended layoff. It's usually an incremental process, and nothing is guaranteed. Just ask Justine Henin or Kim Clijsters. But Delpo is just 21 and he has the resilience and hunger of youth on his side. Chances are he'll zoom right back to the top.
All this may, in some convoluted way, work to Roddick's benefit at the U.S. Open. Previous history means a great deal in tennis, and Roddick's history with Federer and Nadal isn't exactly encouraging (he's a combined 5-24 against them). But he has played only three matches against Delpo, none before a semi or a final. And although Roddick lost all three, two of them went the distance: Roddick lost to Delpo in the semis of the Canadian Masters last year, 7-5 in the third. He also lost the title match to Delpo in Washington a year ago, 7-6 (8-6 in the tiebreaker) in the third.
That's not a lot of history, nor is it a crushing narrative for Roddick. Put yourself in his shoes. Who would you most like to play for the U.S. Open title: Federer, Nadal or del Potro? And if Delpo can knock off Federer and/or Nadal, so much the better for Roddick. It would certainly make his mission less impossible.
Of course, this scenario is loaded with "ifs," but that's what an American tennis fan has to live on these days.
ABOUT THIS BLOG
Peter Bodo
Peter Bodo has been covering tennis for more than 30 years, most of them with TENNIS.com and TENNIS Magazine, where he is a senior editor and author of the popular blog, Peter Bodo's TennisWorld. A two-time WTA writer of the year, Bodo has also written numerous books, including "Tennis For Dummies" with U.S. Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe.