2009 China Open Singles Draw

Nadal is the top seed at an event during the time of the year where he traditionally doesn't play well due to injuries. However, due to injuries, Nadal has not played as much tennis this year as he has in the past. He might have enough in him to do well. If he is not 100%, Blake, Ferrer, Gonzalez, or Davydenko could beat Nadal before the final.

Djokovic, Roddick, and Verdasco are on the other side. Roddick or Djokovic should make it to the final on this side.

Roddick has been playing relatively well against Djokovic lately. I think Roddick could successfully defend his title by winning the whole thing.

Nadal won a tough first match against Baghdatis. Nadal has defeated Blake the last two times that they have played. Even though Blake hasn't been playing well lately, Nadal's next match against Blake will be a very good indicator of his health since Blake has defeated him 3 out of 5 times that they have played. The matches that Nadal have won against Blake were not in straight sets and if he is not fully healthy, Blake could hit through Nadal with his forehand.

Safin deserves at least one good tournament before he retires. Maybe this will be it?

What's up with Roddick? The defending champion losing in straight sets to Kubot, ranked 143 in the world? However, Kubot is somewhat nice to look at.

Now that Roddick is out of the way, Djokovic should make it to the final.

Cilic routs Nadal and no one here writes about it? Are we all doing other things?

Rout is correct....6-1, 6-3. Nadal has been on the receiving end of a few of these beatdowns this year. Even when Federer was going through his downs, no one ever beat him with that kind of scoreline. Congrats to Cilic.

What does the Fed have to do with any of it? And it's actually not true. Nadal ironically handed the Fed a scoreline like that at last year's French.

Oops...ok...one player who will arguably go down as the best clay courters of the game. My bad. And Fed has nothing to do with it...I was making a comparison.

So ... the French Open Final of 2008 where Federer won but four measly games, had his serve broken six times and lost 6-1 6-3 6-0 is something you don't consider a "beatdown"? . I mean ..how embarrassing!! Pete Sampras never got "bageled" in the Final of a Major

I mean..terp honey..we all know you hate Nadal and we all know you would eat Federer's poo-poo at the drop of a hat. But the spurious, nonsensical, non-factual claims you routinely make here are clearly driven but how much you can't stand the guy. Hate Nadal all you like - but get the facts right sweetheart; it just makes you look so pitifully unlearned when you don't. Federer did have almost as humiliating a result: the 2008 Indian Wells Semi-Final loss to Mardy Fish, 36 26. He managed one more game than Nadal did to Cilic. But Cilic is ranked #15; Fish at the time was ranked #98 (so he either had to play Qualifying or wait until at least two guys pulled out to get in the draw), and was 0-5 against Federer going into that one. So this one also qualifies as a "beatdown". Besides, Federer's choking usually starts happening in the 5th Set of a Major - like a pair of 6-2 5th Set "beatdowns" while gasping for air this year alone.

Congrats are most deserved to Cilic. Although at this juncture of the year, it's not unusual to see the guys who've been winning bunches of the bigger titles and/or showing up at the business end of the biggest events earlier in the year give way to fresher guys who weren't as accomplished at the biggest events. Nadal managed to get to the Semis. Del Potro and Roddick just lost their opening matches to guys ranked FAR below them (JMDP lost to a Qualifier). But is it surprising? Andy & JMDP have put together banner years in 2009; Nadal owned the first five months of the ATP Tour. At this stage of the season they're ripe to be taken out by guys who haven't played as deeply into anywhere near as many tournaments as they have. Federer's summer had been so momentous that he didn't want to risk tarnishing it by losing in any of these fall events - which he's been clearly prone to do in the past. So his "back trouble" sent him on hiatus. Same for Murray's "wrist". But somehow I think Federer's "back" and Murray's "wrist" will be just fine come London.

And does anyone remember what Donut Dave Nalbandian did to Federer, Nadal and Djokovic in the fall of 2007? He crushed all of them - twice in the case of Federer and Nadal that year sweeping both Madrid & Paris. And what became of Donut Dave after such stellar results? Well, a lot more of what we see all the time from him: losing to the other guys he'd just pounded, through most of 2008 and beyond. Cilic is one of the many ATP "also rans" who fully understand the top guys are likely to be either below par, off the radar or out for target practice after piling up their impressive results up to now. Let's see if Cilic will be able to pull off any amazing feats he achieves during this period again, on an occasion when the real money is down.

Nadal, Del Potro, Federer, Murray and Djokovic have already qualified for the only tournament left on the calendar that really counts: the Year End Championships in London. You could make the case that Djokovic needs to do well in these preliminary events going into the YEC because not only has he had substandard results in the Majors this year for a World #3, but he's also the current YEC titleholder. And he also needs some born fruit ASAP out of his new coaching arrangement with Todd Martin to justify Martin's salary. Federer, Nadal, and JMDP have Majors in the bag for 2009; Murray and Nadal lead the tour in titles won in 2009, each of them racking up five. History shows us that the best show up when the prizes are the biggest. And so it will be again. These five guys, plus the remaining three warm-bodies who qualify will put their best feet down when it counts most. Just like they always do.

Cilic was simply terrific against Nadal. Rafa didn't play badly, but Cilic could do no wrong. The nice thing about being 6'6" when playing against Rafa is all those high-bouncing balls that drive the short guys nuts are bouncing right into your strike zone. Novak beat Soderling like the Bucs won the Super Bowl, all defense. Novak ran so many balls down and came up with some incredible passes. Aside from consistency, the other big difference I noticed between Soderling and Novak is that Soderling doesn't get down to low balls well (whereas Novak, just an inch or so shorter, can hit two-handers with his ass barely off the pavement). That R16 result at this year's Wimbledon might end up being Soderling's best-ever showing because I just can't imagine someone that awkward on low balls could ever do serious damage on grass.

Did anybody else notice how embarrassingly empty the stands were for the two semis? You had the #2 and #3 players in both semis, yet the attendance in the stands would make you think it was the 1st round of qualifying. With the decent success of the Chinese (women at least) and that beautiful Olympic facility, you'd expect much better attendance.

Yes. And worse is that the players and tennis fans have been told repeatedly the China is a "must have" market for the game. The entire calendar was revamped to give China an ATP 1000 Event in Shanghai. The players now have to schlep half way around he world, and television/internet broadcasts occur at that highly lucrative and popular commercial window of The Middle Of The Night to those of us here . Maybe the upcoming Shanghai Event will be packed with people the Chinese Communist Government "persuades" to occupy seats . The ATP and the WTA keep saying it's about money - China is an "emerging market". But you could never tell looking at a vast stadium that has nobody in it for The China Open. Makes you wonder where the "money" is coming from - or where it's going, doesn't it??

Voicemail, is it humanly possible for you to disagree with someone without also personally insulting them? Sad.

You shoud get your terms right. It's not a disagreement - I corrected his factual error. Again. Facts aren't a matter of opinion. He claimed Federer had never been beaten by such a score line. Not only was he wrong, but proving he's wrong was a fairly simple excercise: Go to the ATP Website, check scores of past matches and "voila". I guess if he's gonna spout off like he does and be as wrong as often as he is then, well, he's askin for it

That would be a no. But boy please...I pay him no mind anymore. More important things ya know.

A nice win for Novak. His defensive skills were, again, simply outstanding. When a player gets to so many damn balls, it's tough for someone like Cilic, who struggles with consistency. Cilic played pretty well, not a horrible number of unforced errors, but they seemed to come during too many critical moments. Plus, for a guy with such a big serve, he never managed to dominate on his service games. Serving for the 2nd set twice? Yikes, that'll bother him for a while. But a week in which you clobber Rafa 1&3 can't be too bad.

By the way, I was gobsmacked to read that James Blake, after like a zillion years with the same coach, just recently switched coaches for the first time in his career (I think his old coach was changing James's diapers). As much as I want to say "better late than never," I think in this case it's more "too little too late." The time for switching coaches (and doing such wild & crazy things as developing a Plan B ) was 5-6 years ago. The motivation for such a stunning decision was that James wants to return to the Top 10. James is sooooooooooo set in his ways that I doubt this new coach will make much of a difference, but nonetheless, I wish him the best of luck.