US Open early upsets!

Wow, Andy Roddick is out of the US Open in the first round! That has to be one of the most surprising results I've seen this year! Which is maybe followed closely by Svetlana Kuznetsova's 1st round loss as well. Who is that, you may ask? Well, she is just the defending champion of the US Open!

What a truly interesting year of tennis, especially Grand Slam tennis. So far, none of this year's slam winners have more than one slam trophy - Marat Safin, Rafael Nadal, and Roger Federer on the men's side and Serena Williams, Justine Henin-Hardenne, and Venus Williams on the women's side. The most interesting stat though is in the women's side which was pointed out by a reader of the CNNSI.com - all of the women Grand Slam winners had to overcome a matchpoint on the way to the title. Serena saved a matchpoint against Maria Sharapova in the AO semis, Justine had to overcome matchpoints against Kuznetsova in the quarters of the FO, and Venus had to save a matchpoint against Lindsay Davenport in the Wimbledon final. Pretty damn cool stat, the one.

So back to the USO. I used to really dislike Roddick, but now he's no longer as in-your-face as he used to be, and I actually felt bad that he lost. Someone said that maybe the fact that even on his best day right now he is still incapable of beating Roger Federer has been playing in his head and has been eating away at his confidence.

Going on the who I think will be the winner, the men's side is a bit more predictable - barring injury, Roger will take it, and as such will have his 6th major. On the women's side, I am hoping that Kim Clijsters finally breaks through and wins her first slam. On paper, she is the player to beat on hard courts. She lost only once on hard courts this year, a fluke result against Shuai Peng (not to be confused with Feng Shui) but won five tournaments on the surface best suited to her game. And she did it by beating all the other top contenders - Davenport, Sharapova, Henin-Hardenne, Myskina, Dementieva, Kuznetsova, Mauresmo and even Venus Williams against whom she has such a bad head-to-head record. The only top player she hasn't gotten to beat on this surface is Serena Williams whom she hasn't played yet this year. But Serena is not in very good form as she hasn't played since Wimbledon so the odds favor Kim there.

Problem with Kim though is that she always loses the big matches. 4 slam finals, no titles. What a shame! Seems she doesn't have the killer instinct to close out the most important matches. So right now, the award for best player never to have won a slam goes to her hands down. I just hope she doesn't hang on to that title for too long. Good luck, Kim!