Ricky Dimon

• The greatest road trip in sports: D.C. Day 2

  2008-08-14 20:59:38
  

  Tennistalk's Ricky Dimon is on stop two of three of his trip through the U.S. Open Series, billed as "The Greatest Road Trip in Sports." This week he is blogging live from the Legg Mason Classic in Washington D.C.
  
  With three of my this-week favorites (Dev Varman, Isner, and Young) posting huge wins on Monday, I knew it would be hard for Day 2 to live up to those standards. It definitely did not (Mardy Fish and Marat Safin to blame), but it was still a great day of tennis.
  
  I arrived well before 4:00 match time again and the only thing that was going on was Vince Spadea (practicing with someone who nobody--including even me--knew).
  
  Davide Sanguinetti--of 2005 U.S. Open fame--is coaching Vince Spadea. Fame at least in my estimation, because he beat Thai legend Paradorn Srichaphan in a five-set classic, arguably the most epic of several five-set epics I have seen at the Open. Still for some reason it's kind of hilarious that he is coaching Spadea. Sanguinetti is, or was, one of the biggest pushers in tennis history. Then again, I guess Spadea could learn a thing or two about the benefits of doing nothing other than keeping the ball in play.
  
  Fish was first up on Center Court playing Alejandro Falla in what I assumed would be a first-round blowout, so I started on the outer courts. Viktor Troicki and Denis Gremelmayr were playing on the Grandstand, and from the top row of the Grandstand you can see Court 1 perfectly, so I watched Igor Kunitsyn vs. Mischa Zverev at the same time.
  
  The cool thing about Court 1, however, is that if you are sitting in the front row on the side with bleachers, you are literally sitting on the court (at least with your feet on the court, and not even that far away from the sidelines). So as Troicki was in the process of crushing Gremelmayr, I went over to Court 1 to watch from courtside. The match was far from thrilling but it was cool to be that close.
  
  The scoreboard showed Fish down a break when I took a seat in a baseline box on Center Court. I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised; Fish has been awful ever since reaching the final in Indian Wells. But he stormed back to win the last four games of the first set for what I again assumed incorrectly would be an insurmountable lead. Fish collapsed over the final two sets--although Falla often produced tennis few thought he was capable of.
  
  American tennis had better luck over on the Grandstand. I arrived with Robert Kendrick having already taken the first set off heavily-favored Feliciano Lopez. Kendrick broke serve late in the second, and with the way he was serving, that proved to be enough to score the upset. That sets up a Kendrick-Dev Varman showdown on Thursday (rematch of a Challenger match a few weeks ago, which Somdev won in straight sets).
  
  I stopped by Court 1 right next door briefly for a doubles match between Americans Bobby Reynolds and Rajeev Ram against Rogier Wassen and Lovro Zovko. The Americans ended up losing (expected), but it's a lot of fun to watch doubles from that close.
  
  The Fish disappointment was soon rivaled by what took place in the next Center Court match. Safin and Fabio Fognini were on serve when I got there, but that quickly changed. At 5-5 Safin dropped serve. Immediately after Fognini closed out the set, Safin walked up to the net and shook hands with him. The chair umpire said something inaudible (presumably that Safin was retiring) so most of the crowd didn't even know what was going on. It was extremely bizarre and looked like Safin was just quitting for no other reason than that he was losing. I would not put it past Safin to do that; after all, just two weeks ago in Cincinnati down match point he called a Dmitry Tursunov serve in that had been called out (and it was probably a foot out) just so he could get off the court as fast as possible. Anyway, Safin's post-match comments made it sound like he really did have a neck injury, but that is questionable at best.
  
  Back-and-forth from Center Court to Grandstand I went, this time for Sebastien Grosjean vs. Eduardo Schwank. It turned out to be probably the best match of the day in terms of long points and high-quality stuff from both players. Grosjean did a ton of scrambling, especially impressive considering his "old" age (30). In the end, though, the up-and-coming Schwank simply had too much power and too much game.
  
  Schwank will play Roddick in round two, and that could be a really good one if Roddick's serving doesn't improve. Roddick fired 21 aces against Ramon Delgado, but the part I saw (end of the second set) did not look good. He double-faulted eight times, most of which came near the end when Roddick shockingly failed to serve out the match at 5-4. He got the job done in the tiebreaker, however.
  
  As expected, a mass exodus of fans occurred after the Roddick match so I moved into a baseline box for the last match of the day between Jesse Levine and Juan Martin Del Potro. I was excited for this one because 1) I (stupidly) gave Levine a fighting chance of at least making it competitive if not pulling off the upset altogether, and 2) I wanted to find out just how Del Potro has won three straight tournaments and 14 matches in-a-row. The Argentine, just 19 years old but already 6'6'', showed how. Let's just say Levine played very well and still came out on the short end of a 6-2, 6-3 blowout. Del Potro beat Roddick in the L.A. final last week and I am attempted to change my Legg Mason prediction to the exact same outcome.

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