US Open 2010 Men’s 1st Round

©photo credit:Philip Ip

The 2010 US Open men’s main draw singles matches will begin on Monday 30 August at 11am local time in New York (11pm Hong Kong time). There are 128 main draw spots divided up between 16 Qualifiers (Q), 8 Wild Cards (WC) and 104 Direct Acceptances.

The US Open, which is known as The Open is the 4th and final Grand Slam tournament of the year. The Open is the 2nd Grand Slam of the year that is played on hard courts and the only one that plays a 5th set tie-break to decide the match.

Pictured above is 2010 Australian Open singles semi finalist Marin Cilic swinging his racquet forward to drive this backhand ground stroke during the Canadian Open earlier this month. The 21 year old 1.98m Croatian uses the HEAD YouTek Radical Midplus tennis racquet and is currently the World No.13 and has a career high ranking of No.9. If you are in Hong Kong and want one of Marin’s racquets or advice on which racquet would be the best for you to use, just email info@oncourtadvantage.com.

Last year Cilic made the quarter finals of the US Open in his best result in New York after knocking out Andy Murray before bowing out to eventual champion Juan Martin del Potro in 4 sets. At the Australian Open this year Cilic defeated del Potro in 5 sets then Andy Roddick in 5 sets before being stopped by Andy Murray. Cilic records his best results on hard courts and will be doing his best to step into del Potro’s shoes this year.

Since Wimbledon 2001 the Grand Slam tournaments have seeded the Top 32 ranked players in the singles events to meet in the 3rd round. Prior to that there were only 16 seeds in the Grand Slams, which used to ensure that the seeded players did not player each other until the round of 16.

The US Open 2010 will feature more men’s tennis than anything else. This is because all of the best players will battle it out in the best out of 5 sets format as opposed to the usual best out of 3 sets format used for all non-Grand Slam tournaments on the ATP Tour.

The seeded players do not receive a BYE in the 1st round of a Grand Slam event. To win the title a player must win 7 best of 5 set matches in a row. For further details about the men’s event you can visit -> US Open 2010 Men’s Schedule of Play and US Open 2010 Men’s Singles Draw.

The United States Tennis Association (USTA) chose to give 6 of the 8 wild cards to Americans and a different 6 men than last year; Donald Young, Bradley Klahn, Jack Sock, Tim Smyczek, James Blake and Ryan Sweeting.

The final 2 Wild Cards are used in a reciprocal arrangement with 2 other Grand Slam tournaments; Roland Garros and the Australian Open. Therefore, Tennis Australia and the French Tennis Federation are able to choose 1 Wild Card entrant each into the US Open. The French chose native Guillaume Rufin and the Australians chose Aussie Carsten Ball. This arrangement gives the USTA a Main Draw Wild Card at these 2 events in return.

Being seeded means that you the earliest round in the event that you can meet another seeded player is 3rd round in which only 32 players remain. The bottom half of both the men’s and women’s draws will be played on Day 1 of the main draw singles events. The player’s name that is bolded in the 1st round singles draw below is OCA’s prediction of who will win each match.

The 2010 US Open men’s singles draw for the 1st round is:

(1) Rafael Nadal v. Teimuraz Gabashvili
Maximo Gonzalez v. Denis Istomen
Gilles Simon v. (WC) Donald Young
Tobias Kamke v. (29) Philipp Kohlschreiber
(23) Feliciano Lopez v. Santiago Giraldo
Rainer Schuettler v. (Q) Benoit Paire
Sergiy Stakhovsky v. Peter Luczak
(Q) Ryan Harrison v. (15) Ivan Ljubicic
(10) David Ferrer v. Alexandr Dolgopolov
Benjamin Becker v. Daniel Brands
Jarkko Nieminen v. Daniel Gimeno-Traver
Jeremy Chardy v. (24) Ernests Gulbis
(31) David Nalbandian v. (Q) Rik De Voest
Florent Serra v. Florian Mayer
Pere Riba v. (Q) Adrian Mannarino
Fabio Fognini v. (8) Fernando Verdasco
(4) Andy Murray v. Lukas Lacko
Ruben Ramirez-Hidalgo v. Dustin Brown
Juan Ignacio Chela v. Lu Yen-Hsun
Mikhail Kukushkin v. (25) Stanislas Wawrinka
(20) Sam Querrey v. (WC) Bradley Klahn
Marcel Granollers v. Andreas Seppi
Guillermo Garcia-Lopez v. Lukasz Kubot
Potito Starace v. (14) Nicolas Almagro
(12) Mikhail Youzhny v. Andrey Golubev
Dudi Sela v. Xavier Malisse
(WC) Jack Sock v. Marco Chiudinelli
Frederico Gil v. (18) John Isner
(28) Radek Stepanek v. Julien Benneteau
Tommy Robredo v. (Q) Lukas Rosol
Victor Hanescu v. Carlos Berlocq
Michael Llodra v. (7) Tomas Berdych
(6) Nikolay Davydenko v. Michael Russell
Simon Greul v. Richard Gasquet
Kevin Anderson v. Somdev Devvarman
(WC) Tim Smyczek v. (26) Thomaz Bellucci
(17) Gael Monfils v. (Q) Robert Kendrick
Igor Andreev v. Horacio Zeballos
Janko Tipsarevic v. Olivier Rochus
Stephane Robert v. (9) Andy Roddick
(16) Marcos Baghdatis v. Arnaud Clement
Eduardo Schwank v. Robby Ginepri
Pablo Cuevas v. (Q) Julio Silva
Jan Hajek v. (19) Mardy Fish
(30) Juan Monaco v. (Q) Peter Polansky
Kristof Vliegen v. (WC) James Blake
Philipp Petzschner v. (Q) Dusan Lojda
Viktor Troicki v. (3) Novak Djokovic
(5) Robin Soderling v. (Q) Andreas Haider-Maurer
Taylor Dent v. Alejandro Falla
Thiemo de Bakker v. (Q) Marc Gicquel
(Q) Ivan Dodig v. (27) Fernando Gonzalez
(21) Albert Montanes v. Michal Przysiezny
(WC) Carsten Ball v. (Q) Milos Raonic
(Q) Kei Nishikori v. Evgeny Korolev
Illya Marchenko v. (11) Marin Cilic
(13) Jurgen Melzer v. Dmitry Tursunov
(Q) Ricardas Berankis v. (WC) Ryan Sweeting
Bjorn Phau v. Ricardo Mello
(Q) Martin Klizan v. (22) Juan Carlos Ferrero
(32) Lleyton Hewitt v. Paul-Henri Mathieu
Leonardo Mayer v. (WC) Guillaume Rufin
Michael Berrer v. Andreas Beck
Brian Dabul v. (2) Roger Federer

Stay tuned to this tennis website for full coverage of every Grand Slam tournament and every major women’s and men’s tennis tournament on the WTA Tour and ATP Tours. Click this link for further details about the US Open including the schedules of play -> US Open 2010 August 24-September 12.