With the US Open beginning on Monday, it’s time to look at three players who’ll be looking to take Flushing Meadows by storm in the coming weeks.
No, I’m not going to be boring and say Djokovic, Nadal and Murray. I want to look at three potential surprise-packages who have a chance of making the latter rounds of the tournament.
Jerzy Janowicz:
The 22-year-old, 6ft 8 Wimbledon Semi-Finalist has the potential to cause real problems for the big players this year.
Serving well is crucial in Hard Court tennis, and nobody has a serve as deadly as Janowicz; his second serves tend to reach 130 mph. For the lower ranked players he is nigh on impossible to break, which will surely serve him well (no pun intended) in the early rounds should he be blessed with an easy draw. Even if he is given a tricky draw his big serving could turn out to be lethal to the best players and I wouldn’t recommend betting against him to cause an upset at some point. His record against top-ten players on hard court is an impressive: Played 11 Won 5 Lost 6 and all three of his senior career finals have been on hard court.
However, when his serve is returned his strokeplay is normally less than top-class; which will surely plague him when he comes to meet the top players. But one would expect him to at least live up to his no.14 seed and make the fourth round at least.
John Isner:
The 6ft 10 Cincinnati Masters runner-up is building himself a pedigree to be proud of. His height and serving talent give him a huge advantage on hard court (it means he can get serious pace and bounce from his shots) and you can expect him to go far in this year’s tournament. Like Janowicz, he is incredibly difficult to break; his 70-68 final set victory over Nicholas Mahut at the 2010 Wimbledon Championships is surely testament to that.
Of his eighteen senior finals twelve have been on hard court (four of those twelve have been victories) and he has a sensational eleven wins over top-10 players (two of which were over no.1 Novak Djokovic). He is one of the players whom Djokovic, Nadal and Murray will be desperately trying to avoid over the course of the tournament.
Isner made the Quarter Final of these Championships two years ago, and don’t be surprised if he equals that (or even betters it) this year.
Kei Nishikori:
The 5ft 10 no.11 is less suited to hard court than the two I’ve named previously (therefore this one is more of a long shot), but the twenty-three year old has shown maturity way beyond his years in multiple tournaments. His style of play will make him very useful on clay court (he prefers to wear opponents down with long rallies), but if he is able to return the serves from the likes of Janowicz and Isner he will be very difficult to win points off. One part of his play that suits hard court is that he plays very offensively and mainly from the baseline, so if he gets on top of his opponent he will be very difficult to shake off. Surprisingly, none of his tournament wins have come on clay (all have come on hard court) which suggests that he really does have the potential to go far in this tournament at some point in his career.
He made the last 16 of these championships aged just eighteen in 2008, so one can expect that he may just better that this year.
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