US Open Report: Day 5

As predicted, there was rain today due to Hurricane Tropical Storm Earl. Fortunately, the bulk of it stayed to the east so that the worst thing that happened was a very brief 30-min rain delay. Like with the storm, there was little drama today with almost all of the seeds and/or higher ranked players moving through without too much of a fuss.

For the men, one of the big stories is the dominance of the Spanish Armada led by top seed Rafael Nadal. There are a staggering nine Spanish players in the third round. Other than Nadal, other Spanish winners today include 8th seed Fernando Verdasco, 10th seed David Ferrer, 14th seed Nicolas Almagro, 23rd seed Feliciano Lopez, Tommy Robredo, and Daniel Gimeno-Traver. Nadal showed off his impressive serve taking out out Denis Istomin in straight sets under the lights of Ashe Stadium.

Other seeded men to move through today include Andy Murray, Mikhail Youzhny, John Isner, Sam Querrey, Stanislas Wawrinka, and David Nalbandian. The only men seed to fall today was 29th seed Philipp Kohlschreiber who was taken out by former top 10 player Gilles Simon in five sets. Speaking of five sets, that was how many sets Sergiy Stakhovsky of Ukrainian needed to take out 18yo American Ryan Harrison, who unfortunately squandered 3 match points.

It was the same story for the ladies as all of the winners won in straight sets for a place in the Round of 16s. Top seeds Kim Clijsters, Venus Williams (who debuted her very sparkly night outfit), Samantha Stosur, Francesca Schiavone, and Elena Dementieva all won as well as 16th seed Shahar Peer, 20th seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, and former world no. 1 Ana Ivanovic. Clijsters actually rallied from a slow 0-3 start and being broken twice to win the next 12 games for the match! There are still 6 former Grand Slam champions in the draw which is impressive considering Serena Williams is not in the draw. Speaking of Serena, she was on the grounds today doing some interviews, watching her sister Venus win, and even taking the time to commentate the first set of Nadal-Istomin.

The next few days should be completely different weather-wise (not too hot and actually quite pleasant) and as Monday is Labor Day, this long holiday weekend looks to be filled with tons of great tennis matches.