{"id":86,"date":"2011-03-09T13:43:10","date_gmt":"2011-03-09T13:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavytopspin.com\/?p=86"},"modified":"2011-03-09T13:43:10","modified_gmt":"2011-03-09T13:43:10","slug":"wednesday-topspin-start-hydrating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/09\/wednesday-topspin-start-hydrating\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday Topspin: Start hydrating"},"content":{"rendered":"

Indian Wells draw: <\/em>The most interesting quarter, by far is Robin Soderling<\/strong>‘s. \u00a0In the first round, Juan Martin Del Potro<\/strong> must face Radek Stepanek<\/strong>–most likely an easy match for the Argentine, but with both players’ health issues, you never know. \u00a0The winner plays defending champion Ivan Ljubicic<\/strong>–again, an outcome that will depend in part on injury status.<\/p>\n

The winner of that<\/em> match will probably play Alexandr Dolgopolov<\/strong>, and whoever comes out on top then, most likely, gets Soderling.<\/p>\n

In the other half of that quarter are Andy Murray<\/strong> and Fernando Verdasco<\/strong>, both guys with a shot at winning the tournament. \u00a0Verdasco, however, will probably need to beat Richard Berankis<\/strong> in his first match.<\/p>\n

Also of note: James Blake<\/strong> faces a qualifier in the first round, and if he wins, he draws Andy Roddick<\/strong>. \u00a0Milos Raonic<\/strong> opens up against Marsel Ilhan<\/strong>, and the winner faces Mardy Fish<\/strong>. \u00a0Raonic-Fish could easily be the highlight of the second round. \u00a0Another potential second-rounder is Roger Federer<\/strong> vs. Kei Nishikori<\/strong>, assuming Nishikori beats Igor Andreev<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

It’s nice to have all the top players in the world together again, isn’t it?<\/p>\n

Speaking of Milos: <\/em>Raonic’s rapid rise is creating all sorts of oddities. \u00a0He’s currently ranked 37th, and since he doesn’t have many points to defend, a decent performance at either Indian Wells or Miami will push him into the top 32. \u00a0 Once there (or even close), he’ll be seeded at the French Open. \u00a0I wonder how many times it has happened that a player has to qualify for one grand slam and then is seeded at the next?<\/p>\n

Miami creates another unique situation for the Canadian. \u00a0Because the cut is determined so early, Raonic is not yet in the main draw of Key Biscayne. \u00a0Anyone ranked higher than 78th got into the main draw. \u00a0As is, Milos will be the top seed in qualifying (ranked in the 30s!), unless he gets a wild card, or enough players withdraw to move him into the main draw the old-fashioned way.<\/p>\n

A little more from the desert: <\/em>Yesterday was the first day of qualifying, and frankly, it wasn’t very interesting. \u00a0But one result stuck out: Rohan Bopanna<\/strong> took down Peter Polansky<\/strong>, 7-6(6) 3-6 7-5. \u00a0Bopanna has never had much success as a singles player, but his five-set effort against Viktor Troicki<\/strong> has got to have given him some confidence.<\/p>\n

Today, Bopanna will face top seed Daniel Brands<\/strong> for a spot in the main draw.<\/p>\n

Little brother: <\/em>A single note from Futures this morning: \u00a0One of the qualifiers at Ukraine F2 is 17-year-old Leonard Stakhovsky<\/strong>. \u00a0Yep, he’s Sergiy’s brother. \u00a0He currently has a lone ranking point to his name, but he’ll get at least one more this week. \u00a0After winning three matches to get into the tournament, he beat Grzegorz Panfil<\/strong>, a Pole ranked in the top 500, to reach the second round.<\/p>\n

Sergiy withdrew from Indian Wells, so this may be the first week that Leonard has the best result of the family.<\/p>\n

See you tomorrow!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Indian Wells draw: The most interesting quarter, by far is Robin Soderling‘s. \u00a0In the first round, Juan Martin Del Potro must face Radek Stepanek–most likely an easy match for the Argentine, but with both players’ health issues, you never know. \u00a0The winner plays defending champion Ivan Ljubicic–again, an outcome that will depend in part on … Continue reading Wednesday Topspin: Start hydrating<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-recaps","category-indian-wells"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}