Toronto – round 1st + 2nd

The tournament was deprived of the best Spaniards (Nadal, Ferrer, Almagro, Verdasco, F.Lopez) and best Swiss players (Federer, Wawrinka), furthermore Roddick and Monfils didn’t appear at the Canadian Open. The Frenchman hasn’t played a tournament since May – last year during the American summer swing he was a Top 10 player, now drops outside the Top 30. The draw has been cut this year from 56 to 48, thus far only Paris-Bercy was a Masters 1000 event with 16 players having ‘bye’ in the first round.
19-year-old Bernard Tomic [49] still disappoints this season. He has admittedly snapped a 7-match losing streak but couldn’t take an advantage of Novak Djokovic‘s jet lag and lost all break points he had in first three service games of the Serb. Djokovic found his rhythm after that, and won the opening match easily 6-2 6-3. Physically he looked better than other Olympic heroes – Juan Martin del Potro and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga seemed pretty tired and lost their first matches on Wednesday after identical scoreline 4-6 6-7. “I came here Monday night,” explained Del Potro. “It’s not easy to play after a big effort in the Olympics, but I tried anyway.” Andy Murray, who played last week eleven matches in eight days (6 singles, 4 mixed, 1 doubles), had some problems with left thigh but his superiority over an ultra-defensive Flavio Cipolla [97] is so huge that the Scot won the match actually standing on one leg. “After playing for eight weeks on grass pretty much, it’s very different here,” said Murray. “The ball is very quick compared with Wimbledon. It also bounces much higher. The court is much slower as well, so there are a lot of things to change. Only got a couple hits on the court, so it was good to play a match and get a win fairly comfortably.” Tommy Haas [25] notched another two important wins beating David Nalbandian and Gilles Simon, against Nalbandian he played the longest tie-break of his career, lost it 11/13, squandering four match points, but saved three break points at 1:2 in the 3rd set to clinch the victory 6-2 6-7 6-3 in 2 hours 22 minutes.