US Open Day 2 Round-up: Gonzalez wins battle of Chileans, Djokovic makes short work of Ljubicic

Fernando Gonzalez def. Nicolas Massu

Gonzalez and Massu know each other well, and this match had an interesting dynamic. It was almost like a quiet determination because they both respect each other. Sometimes I see Massu put in some shocking performances, but this one should probably be considered good in comparison. It was an entertaining match, the contrast of Gonzalez's showmanship and Massu's fighting spirit.

Massu did everything right execution-wise and in terms of effort, it's just that he doesn't have the extra spark that Gonzalez naturally does, the explosiveness in shotmaking. He went after his shots, hit bigger than he normally would and used his forehand the best way he could instead of grinding it out. Gonzalez hit some spectacular shots, unpredictable shots, but Massu was unfazed by all of it and I guess the familiarity of having known Gonzalez for such a long time would have helped with that.

Gonzalez's performance was almost like a direct contrast to Verdasco's earlier in the day. Gonzalez is a moody and unpredictable player, which is the only way I can explain his random shot selections, when he decides to pull the trigger and when he chooses to dig them out instead. And lately, he has been particularly moody, so I think this was almost a demonstration of playing tennis that interests him, an uncompromising approach. It's not like he hit every ball as hard as he could, he played with more flair than that. At one point, he returned with a serve with one of those chopped sidespin shots that you see in a junior social tennis game.

Gonzalez wasn't completely focused on the job but he was hungry for the win, you could see on the basis on the urgency of his movement. Sometimes he'd throw away return games, and he'd throw in numerous cheap errors, but he hit enough spectacular shots to think that at some point he'd get that break of serve he wanted. It's hard to play against someone that doesn't really show any patterns of play and lashes out at the ball as often as that. It's almost like everything is dictated by whatever he decides to do and nothing else, and soon enough you'll end up constantly looking over the other side trying to figure out what he's thinking, but the next minute Gonzalez might be thinking and feeling something else.

Gonzalez mentally checked out for a while in the last couple of games in the third set, but managed to pull himself together just enough to serve it out the third time after finding himself down break points yet again.

Novak Djokovic def. Ivan Ljubicic

Djokovic came out hitting the ball more cleanly than I'd seen from him in a while in an early round match. The sound of his ball-striking sounded great, though I can't tell whether it's just that the sound effects of my TV are merely better than they were in Cincinnati. But I think Djokovic looked confident to begin with, while the opposite must be said for Ljubicic. Djokovic's movement and intensity looked great, and he had no problem using his long levers and dynamic movement to return Ljubicic's serve with ease. Rarely would Djokovic reduce himself to a one-handed return on the backhand.

This looked like a potential banana skin for Djokovic, but for me when I looked at this match-up, Ljubicic has never really had any success against Djokovic recently. He had no belief in himself, and didn't really know what he was doing on court. There was no energy about him, which is what it typically looks like when Ljubicic is in a slump. He was literally walking around the court, and whenever he seemed to temporarily pick up the energy of his footwork enough, all Djokovic had to do was feed him more balls and eventually a sluggish error would come his way. I must say it was impressive that Djokovic only hit two unforced errors in the opening two sets. The match had an air of inevitability about it, so I skipped past it after the second set reached its completion.