Friday 2 September 2016

Garbine and Milos depart US Open

Winning Roland Garros hasn't exactly been the driver for wonderful subsequent experiences for Garbine Muguruza.  
Her first match after the major triumph on clay was a loss on grass to 61st ranked Kirsten Flipkens.  She followed this with a second round exit at Wimbledon to 124th ranked Jana Cepelova.

A third round loss at the Olympics preceded Garbine's return to some form in Cincinnati where she made the semi finals losing to eventual winner Karolina Pliskova.
Included among her Cincinnati wins was Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, ranked 18 and the only top 20 player successfully negotiated by Muguruza since the French Open.

The US Open continued the woes for the Venezuelan-born Spanish star, seeded number three.  She was dumped in two sets by Latvian Anastasija Sevastova.

In a day and night of the biggest upsets so far this tournament, American Ryan Harrison, who was the nation's great young hope a few years back, injected much hope and even more delight into the crowd with his excellent win over fifth seed and Wimbledon runner-up Milos Raonic.
Ryan is smiling, but also happy is Nadal who would have been preparing to face the Canadian. In the last eight.

Womens number nine seed and 2004 champion here, Svetlana Kuznetsova, fell to twice runner-up Caroline Wozniacki.  The Danish delight has been out of form for most of this year, and for the rest of the time she has been injured.  The former world number one has fallen in the rankings to 74, and when trailing 0-4 appeared set to fall further.  

However her sparkling display against Sveta, winning the next seven games, reminded us of the talent Wozniacki possesses.  Her constant attack and blinding pace worried the Russian into too many errors, and apart from a stumble when serving for the match at 6-4 5-3, Caro flew sweetly into the third round 6-4 6-4.

Rafa Nadal thrashed Andreas Seppi in sets one and three, and won a tighter middle set.to complete his progress.
Other Spanish success came through the victory achieved by Roberto Bautista Agut,  who dismissed Argentine Federico Delbonis in four sets.

It didn't make up for the Muguruza disaster, which was compounded somewhat by 31st seed Spaniard Albert Ramos-Vinolas losing his match. 
Other seeds not surviving the second round were Pablo Cuevas (18) and Benoit Paire (32).

Novak Djokovic had the easiest path to round three after Jiri Vesely could not contest their match due to injury.  Other not quite so easy but nevertheless destructive displays came from  Cilic, Keys, Monfils, Vinci, Bencic and Sock.

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