Seeded Players Feel the U.S. Open Pressure Right Away
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For
most seeded players in the United States Open, the opening matches are a
chance to work out a few wrinkles, shake off some rust and become used
to the swirling winds, the warm conditions and the speed of the courts.
All
of that fell by the wayside for many players Monday. High seeds and big
names instead fended off calamity in a stream of matches that turned
out more adventurous than expected.
At
the head of that list was Andy Murray, who took a two-sets-to-none lead
over Robin Haase of the Netherlands, only to find himself fighting
relentless muscle cramps. Murray, seeded eighth and two years removed
from winning his first Grand Slam title here,
began twitching and grabbing various body parts in the third set. He
paced in front of his chair instead of sitting during changeovers and
did everything he could to keep himself in the match.
He
finally did win, 6-3, 7-6 (6), 1-6, 7-5, as Haase seemed in nearly as
much discomfort as Murray, although he was less demonstrative about it.
“I
was in good position two sets up, and I started cramping in the third
set,” Murray said. “I didn’t know whether to go for it in the third or
conserve my energy for the fourth. It was tough, and I know Robin was
feeling it as well. There were parts of that match that weren’t
particularly pretty to watch, but I’m just happy to get through.”
Murray,
normally one of the fittest players on tour, has had a tough year
battling back from back surgery and has not won a tournament in more
than a year. Still, a first-round match against an unseeded player and
temperatures in the mid-80s are not usually things that would trouble
him.
But
his suffering became more and more evident as the match wore on. He
alternately grabbed at his quadriceps muscles on his right leg, his left
hamstring and, for a while, the muscles under his right armpit. He
flexed his wrists compulsively and tried to keep moving.
The
unlikely trouble hardly stopped at Murray’s match. No. 2 seed Simona
Halep found herself fighting off a challenge from an American college
sophomore, and No. 5 Angelique Kerber needed nearly two and a half hours
to escape unseeded Ksenia Pervak.
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, seeded ninth and playing great tennis on hardcourts leading up to the U.S. Open,
dropped a set and needed a tiebreaker to win another in a 6-3, 4-6, 7-6
(2), 6-1 victory over Juan Mónaco. Venus Williams, 34, seeded 19th but
playing one of the few touring players older than she is — Kimiko
Date-Krumm, 43 — started out by spraying errors all over the court
before rallying to win, 2-6, 6-3, 6-3.
That victory required Williams to overcome 36 unforced errors, 19 of them in the first set. Eventually, she settled into her somewhat rejuvenated game,
although nothing came easily in this match. In the third set, both
players were hounded by bees, enough that Williams called for help. The
trespassing bee was then ushered away by a ball boy and ball girl armed
with towels.
Asked
what was more troublesome, the bee or Date-Krumm, Williams laughed:
“That’s a tough question. The bee was annoying, but Kimiko was tougher.
She hits the ball like no one else on tour.”
No.
21 Mikhail Youzhny discovered the chaotic theme of the day the hard
way, losing in four sets to Nick Kyrgios, a 19-year-old Australian. But
even though the 60th-ranked Kyrgios is unseeded at the Open, he is not
an unknown quantity, having knocked Rafael Nadal out of Wimbledon
to announce his presence as a dangerous player. Kyrgios takes full
advantage of the energy of youth, relentlessly pushing the pace of the
match, seemingly ready to play the next point before the last ball has
stopped bouncing.
Kyrgios
snatched the first two sets before wobbling. He became so frustrated he
earned three code violations. When Youzhny looked as if he might send
the match to a fifth set, Kyrgios righted himself and came back from a
break down in the fourth to grab victory in a tiebreaker.
“I
was struggling a little bit about that two-and-a-half-hour mark, but I
knew that if I hung in I would get that second wind where I could start
playing good tennis again,” Kyrgios said.
The
same could be said for Halep, who seemed to be on the verge of coming
unglued in the first set of her 6-7 (2), 6-1, 6-2 victory over Danielle
Rose Collins.
Halep
could have been excused for overlooking Collins, who was playing in her
first Open, as the beneficiary of a wild card she earned with a
surprise victory in the N.C.A.A. tournament. Collins, the No. 32 seed,
marched through the draw to become the first women’s singles champion
from the University of Virginia.
Collins
battled Halep into a first-set tiebreaker, where Halep seemed to lose
her composure as well as the set. After dumping several errors into the
net in the tiebreaker, Halep took several big swipes with her racket,
barely missing smashing it into the court.
“It’s
really difficult to be second seeded here,” Halep said. “It’s my first
time and my best ranking and the best moment of my life, but it is
difficult. There is a lot of pressure on me. People say I should win and
I can win. I want to take match by match and see how far I can go in
this tournament.”
For
Halep, a loss would have marred an otherwise spectacular year. She
started with a run to the quarterfinals at the Australian Open; a trip
to the final of the French Open, where she lost to Maria Sharapova; and a semifinal appearance at Wimbledon, where she lost to Eugenie Bouchard.
Halep
turned her boiling point into positive motivation early in the second
set, using her first break opportunity to swing the match in her favor.
She pounced on a few short balls hit by Collins — the kind that unnerved
Halep in the first set — and pounded them for clear winners. She needed
only 33 minutes to win the second set, followed by nearly as emphatic a
victory in the third.
Kerber also needed three sets and more than two hours to win her first-round match against Pervak, 6-2, 3-6, 7-5.
In
contrast, No. 4 seed Agnieszka Radwanska advanced past Sharon Fichman
of Canada, 6-1, 6-0, in 47 minutes. Radwanska is trying to reverse a
career of misfortune at the Open, where she has never advanced past the
fourth round in eight previous tournaments and had a string of three
straight years in which she was bounced as early as the second round.
A few other first-round matches Monday were over just after people
realized they had started. No. 21 Sloane Stephens steamrollered Annika
Beck of Germany, 6-0, 6-3, in 61 minutes. Kurumi Nara of Japan, the No.
31 seed, needed 59 minutes to rout Aleksandra Wozniak of Canada, 6-2,
6-1.
Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/sports/tennis/simona-halep-feels-the-us-open-pressure-right-away.html?_r=0
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