Congrats Juan Martin!

Roger is my fave, but it was nice to see a terrific match and when JMDP went into Spanish and teared up- how could you not feel happy for him.

Now guys, what did I tell you?

It's annoying as hell when someone is told-you-so, so don't take me too seriously. Plus when I predicted this -- Del Potro takes USO -- at the start of hard courts, I did it in the form of a question. I need to start getting more hard line.

Argh, I HAVEN'T SEEN THIS MATCH. I've been working against deadlines all day, texting back and forth with my boyfriend the big Federer fan whenever I had a split sec. He watched it. One day I'm going to unleash him on all you guys (and myself -- I'll get it worst): he gets an ATP post and a WTA post in this forum. We decided this over alcohol and the women's final. He was sick to death of all the Serena bashing and had some funny, good stuff to say about it.

I hope I can see this match on Tennis Channel when I get home tonight.

I hope Federer gets some more majors over the next few years. He's far from over. No one plays like him, and it doesn't seem like there's anyone with his style of play in the wings. (Dimitrov is flopping, at least now.)

But I'm really glad someone new has stepped forward. And Del Potro has just been hugely underrated this year.

He has come a loooooong way -- and fast. I remember watching him go down easy to Rafa and others and wondering what the hell people saw in him. He was bashing the ball back flat with no sense of where to put it. His serve was a disgrace considering his height. This was just two years ago.

The moment I knew he was something special was USO series last summer, and the moment I really knew he (not Murray) was next gen was when he smashed Davydenko in Davis Cup on clay last fall. Look out, because he's a clay force too. Grass is the only surface where he has work to do to be a top contender -- if not the top one.

Too busy with work, so I won't be able to watch the tivo of the final for a couple of days still. But the one thing that hit me about JMDP's victory is the big empty pit that must be in the stomachs of Novak, Andy M, and Andy R. Those were the three who had the highest hopes of winning a Slam this year, yet all end 2009 empty-handed. You gotta think all three of them are watching DelPo hoisting up a Slam trophy and thinking to themselves, "F@#$! that should have been ME!!"

But congratulations, big time, to Juan Martin Del Potro! Any and every Slam winner should be proud, but it is so difficult to win a Slam in the era of Federer and Nadal that JMDP should feel extra super-duper proud of his accomplishment.

Let alone beating them both in the tournament to do it! Kinda like Mandlikova beating Evert and then Navratilova to win the USO in '85. Huge props to Juan. Roger's my favorite, but really am impressed with JMDP for coming back and playing to win. Great win. Great for men's tennis.

Dick Enberg's match "commentary" was annoying ---- any of us that follow tennis could have easily played his role. It's time for CBS to get new blood, and I'm not talking about Brad Gilbert. For Dick to tell the winner to "hurry" because he wanted to speak in spanish was atrocious. It proved that Dick was named correctly.

Yeah. That was despicable, really. I'm glad JMDP stuck to his guns and got to give thanks in his native language (for those wondering, to his team, his family back home, and the Argentine fans in the crowd and everyone who supported him all the way), and it was nice to see him choke up a bit as he did so. I hope CBS will recover from the whopping 30 seconds of crappy sitcoms it was prevented from showing because of his selfish whims! Caroline got to give speeches in two other languages the other night without any fuss, and she was just the runner-up.

2H has rightfully swooped down to point out he had faith in JMDP from the get-go. But I was sceptical not because I didn't think he had the ability, but because Fed has demonstrated time and again that the big servers and big hitters just don't bother him. A Soderling or a Berdych might grab a set or two, but he will actually end up out-serving and out-hitting them in the end. The players who have had the most success against him in recent years (i.e. defeated him more than once in that span) have had to have tenacious defensive skills, reliable and effective passing shots, and excellent/solid returns (read: Rafa, Djoko, Murray, Simon and even Nalby) to neutralise his strengths (serve and netplay) and frustrate him into errors from the baseline. (In fact, that's pretty much exactly how Delpo got himself back into the second set and ended up winning it.) Plus, of course, there's the whole mental quotient, and Delpo has hardly given reason to believe in him on that score up until now, but in that he had pretty much the rest of the non-Nadal ATP tour to join him in that failing when it comes to Fed and the Slams. But the guy who got so much flak (from myself included) for getting double-bagelled by Fed in the last hard-court Slam, and for letting him escape on the clay of Paris, finally came good here in NYC and it's a remarkable storyline.

I'm getting a bit annoyed by suggestions from Fed supporters (elsewhere, not here) that Fed let it slip away because he just doesn't care about winning now that he's got his FO and 15th and so the loss is meaningless. If that's the case, he would retire and spend time with his new family (I wouldn't shed many tears ) but if he's going to insist that he still has that competitive fire and wants to keep winning for years to come, then I don't want that bogus shrugging of the shoulders from his partisans when someone does manage to score a win over him. Surely the losses don't hurt as much as they might have now that he's done it all, but this guy still does not like to lose. It's also important to note that the coveted Grand Slam (not calendar year but four in a row regardless) would have been very possible had he won here and picked up another AO - since the FO is still not a lock for Fed to defend, starting all over again would be very difficult. Somewhere Laver is smiling.

Still, for the most part Delpo seems to be getting a lot of credit. I think what impressed me most is the way he converted the set points on his serve in both tiebreakers without blinking - he had very little margin for error despite early leads, taking them (7-5) and (7-4). If Roddick and Djoko had managed that in their own recent finals against Fed (combining for eleven wasted set points, including triple set point for each) they would each have an extra Slam title to add to their lonely trophies. Hopefully this will light up a fire under them to have that extra belief if they get into those winning situations again. Meanwhile, Murray has to be feeling more irrelevant by the day, and I hope it motivates him to cure his flakiness at the majors. He's suddenly found himself as the only one in the Top 6 (the Big 6 now?) without a major to his name.

Oh, and as a couple more final thoughts. I thought the European-style football/soccer chanting during, I believe, the change of ends in the 4th-set tiebreaker was very, very cool - don't think I've ever heard that at the USO before. Nice way to show the Latin American support for Delpo and more broadly hopes for a fifth set. The USO crowd, for all its drunken shouting in the late nights and occasional rowdiness, is generally pretty even-handed (except for home players, obviously and reasonably enough) and adds greatly to the match atmosphere; compare to the FO crowd, who only add as much negativity as possible and of course were pretty disgraceful as they all but ushered Rafa to the exit themselves (hard to see the Wimby or USO crowds treat a multiple-time defending champ like that, namely Fed himself) - for all that I do get a kick out of them sometimes. And it's striking to have a third Argentine champion at the USO, and Vilas, Sabatini and now Delpo have taken out the biggest names to do it: Connors, Graf and now Federer. (It's wryly amusing how sometimes people rush to point out that Vilas 'only' won it on green clay, when the greatest clay court player of all time - now that Rafa is further away from tying much less exceeding Borg's six RG wins - himself couldn't get the job done against Connors the year before. Not to mention two of Vilas's Slams came on the grass at the AO of the time. Also, it was hysterical when on the Tennis Channel replay - how good were Jimmy and Martina for that by the way? I like how they play off each other - Leif Shiras baited Jimmy by asking him if he recalled that final against Vilas: he waited a beat and then said 'I do' through gritted teeth and said nothing more.)

That cannot be blamed on Enberg...CBS was telling him to wrap it up so they could get to the How I Met Your Mother rerun that was on next on the East Coast.

I am very, very happy for Del Potro. I read some of his comments this morning in my local sports section of the paper here. He said he has had 2 dreams: one to win at the US Open, and number 2 to be like Federer. Good for him. One down and one to go. I look forward to seeing him in many more tournaments and slams.

It seemed things turned around at 30-30 in the second set at 5-3 when JMDP hit a passing shot forehand down the line that barely caught the line. It was called out, and the replay showed it was good. That really seemed to turn the momentum, right at that point. Federer did what he's done before, he gets sour when the replay goes against him, like he believes the technology got it wrong. But he remained pissy, and JMDP got confidence, and that's all it took. Then nearing the end of that set, there was another call that got overturned in favor of DelPo, and that irked the Fed some more.

Seems very possible that if the technology weren't there, JMDP would have lost that second set, and just would have gone the way of many previous Federer victims (he's never lost a match at a slam when having won the first two sets). What I don't get, though, is that most of the players see the shot-spot technology as an equalizer, so you don't fester over calls gone against you. It removes that doubt. If you remember a couple Wimbledons back, the Fed audibly said "these calls are killing me" as though the technology was out to get him. I'm not saying it's flawless (remember Murray escaped by the fuzzy hair of his chinny-chin-chin when shot-spot was obviously looking at the wrong shot and mal-called the play against Ljubicic) but it's better than a repeat of what happened to Serena when she lost to Capriati at the USO years ago...(oh, the irony)

I don't have Two-Hander's predictive skills (hell, not even Miss Cleo does!) but I sure have no problem eating crow. I just saw DelPo's futility continuing vs the biggest guns this year, and now, he's started a mini-ownership of Rafa, and has now finally beat the Fed. He's become the new Murray, and Murray is starting to look more like the ATP's Jankovic (close, just one major final, still no slams, and not getting any closer) and Djokovic is starting to look like the ATP's Ivanovic (Serbian, downright pretty, and probably just one slam).

Anyone have any Grey Poupon for my crow?

This US Open was an interesting side note: it was only the third time since January 2005 that a Major Championship (20 events) went to someone not named Federer or Nadal. Del Potro had at least one interesting thing to say after winning Monday, and it's about as honest an assessment as you could ever hope to hear from someone who's just won their first Major:

Juan Martin del Potro, on his ambitions after winning the U.S. Open: "I would like to be top four, top three or top one in the future. But I have to play like today many, many weeks in the year. I don't have the shape to do that but maybe if I'm still working and still going in the same way, maybe in the future I can."

His self awareness will serve him very well, along with that incredible Forehand. It's clear a hard court is always going to be his best surface - his 6'6" stature will assure the ball will be bouncing up right into his strike zone almost every time - there will be no shoulder height hitting for him ever on a surface with as consistent a bounce as a hard court gives. Grass is likely to be a most difficult surface for him, given the ball stays extremely low, which translates into an awful lot of bending and digging up shots off the turf for a guy his size - not the ideal way to win there .

You'd have to think Federer went in thinking Del Potro would end up choking being in his first Major Final, like Djokovic did 2007. Safin had the best synopsis of Federer's MO in every match. Sayeth Marat: "It only takes Federer 4 games into a match to destroy your entire game. Never been anything like that". Absolutely true. And Mondays match is an example of how Federer's illustrious career ends up undermining him. Those players who stay with Federer in a match, and never allow their games to be destroyed early on, have historically given Federer the most trouble. Once his "magic" doesn't do the trick quickly, he starts feeling the pressure of the weight of what he's become. Nadal, Nalbandian, Murray, and sometimes Djokovic have had their success against him in exactly that way. Federer's supposed to win just about every match he plays - and he should. But when a close match gets down to the wire, those expectations from the world, and mostly himself, start making his racquet heavier and heavier. He does start to feel it sometimes, and that's when we start seeing the shanks and errors, especially off his Money Forehand. Probably what he meant when he said he's "created a monster". It's almost unfair to hold him to to have to perform to the standard of his own excellence. Talk about a tough gig!

Here's a question I have regarding Shot Spot and particularly that ball Delpo hit down the line. Roger was pointing to a mark that was clearly out and that showed space between the mark and the line. But Martina N explained that the Shot Spot bases the shape it shows on the trajectory of the ball, a shape that is different than the mark. And often this shape shows that the ball hit the line even though the mark shows it out. But how can the mark be out but the ball actually touch. It doesn't make sense to me. If the mark of the ball is out, then clearly no part of the ball hit the line, right? It seems like Shot Spot is a simulation of what the ball MIGHT have done rather than what it actually did.

still haven't had a chance to watch anything but the last few games, but just to finish off the translation of what DelPo said in his Spanish acceptance speech: after thanking everyone, he added, "this is for you" and that's when he started to tear up. I found that very touching.

Actually, Killer Cutie Cahill addressed that during the match. He said spmething like... sometimes a mark (moreso on a hard court) isn't the entire footprint of the ball. Often times it's just a narrower oblong or oval or even a smaller mark than the actual size of the ball because of the trajectory or spin, etc. i can't remember exactly what he said (can check the DVR) but he said that's why it can actually touch the line when the mark, where the pressure could have distorted the actual location of the entire ball's placement. Made sense to me.

But the technology is the same for everyone. If it's correct, it's correct for everyone, if it's flawed within millimeters, it's flawed within millimeters for everyone. Obviously better than the human eye, and better than people just being able to pick the wrong mark, or line judges subconsciously playing favorites, or just getting the call wrong altogether. The Fed, like all players, has had some close shot-spot calls go his way, too.

OK, a little late to the party, but I didn't have time to watch my tivo of the match until just now. Del Potro was simply great in terms of keeping his composure, hanging in there, and playing some terrific critical points (those forehand down-the-line passes? incredible!). But watching that fifth set, I had to feel a little sorry for Andy Roddick. If Andy saw the match, he had to be thinking, "why the f*ck do Nadal and Del Potro get Shankopotamus in their fifth sets whereas I get Man of Steel??" Congrats to Juan Martin, but man oh man, Fed was just piss-poor in the 5th. OK, not as bad as he was in the 5th of AO final (where he was flat-out awful), but still, pretty bad.

The answer: Rafa and JMDP forced Fed into titanic rallies from the baseline so that he had lost his edge by the time the fifth rolled around. A-Rod's style of play (huge serve, relatively mediocre returns, solid but not relentless baseliner) means fewer and shorter rallies, especially when coupled with the grass, so Fed was relatively much fresher even to the final stages of the match. For comparison, the AO final went to 4 hours 23 minutes and the USO final went to 4 hours 6 minutes, while the Wimby final went to 4 hours 16 min - all about the same duration, and yet the latter featured 20-something more games than the first two! (77 to 51 and 53, respectively.) Of course, if Roddick hadn't become Shankopotamus himself in the second-set tiebreaker, there likely wouldn't have been a fifth set at all, but that's neither here nor there.

Just to cover his bases, though, maybe Andy should think about investing in some Spanish lessons and a bandanna.

Tennis Guy (Your Post #159)

I have to ask.... what does " Anyone have any Grey Poupon for my crow" actually mean?