By Mike McIntyre
Three ATP World Tour 250 events are on deck for this week and Andy Murray makes his first appearance since losing the semi-finals of Wimbledon. We have two clay-court stops in Europe in Gstaad, Switzerland and Umag, Croatia while the North American hard-court swing continues in Los Angeles.
Russian Mikhail Youzhny has the top seed this week in Gstaad and will be playing for the first time since the Davis Cup quarter-finals two weeks ago where he went 1-1 against Argentina (beat Mayer, lost to Nalbandian). His last stop on clay-courts was at the French Open in May where he advanced to the quarters. Youzhny is currently the 14th ranked player in the world which is likely a bit higher than his talent level actually resides. He has had a solid year however, winning the title in Munich and finishing second in Dubai and Rotterdam. Without playing on clay for two months though I'm not expecting him to advance too deep in this week's draw.
Threats in the top-half of the draw include veteran Tommy Robredo - who every time I write about his weaknesses promptly goes out and wins a title, Albert Montanes - who won his opening match on Sunday 4-6, 6-3, 7-6(5) against Pere Riba of Spain, and Richard Gasquet - who won this event in 2006.
Brazil's Tomaz Bellucci is the defending champion and won his maiden ATP title here a year ago after advancing through the qualification stages. Bellucci opens against local Swiss hope Marco Chiudinelli and would face the tricky Igor Andreev in the second round.
Nicolas Almagro is seeded second and ended his 17-month title drought just over a week ago in Bastad. He followed that up by getting bounced in his opening match in Hamburg, so who knows which player we should expect this week?
I was hoping we might see Roger Federer play on home soil but such is not the case. With his recent struggles I would have thought a smaller tournament would be just what the doctor ordered for Roger to give him a much needed boost of confidence. Perhaps he doesn't want to touch the clay with some big hard-court tournaments looming on the schedule. I'm looking forward to seeing what he does in the weeks leading up to the U.S. Open.
Andy Murray is the only top-five player in action this week and begins his hard-court preparations in Los Angeles. Murray has not won a title since November and the only final he participated in was his very first tournament of 2010 at the Australian Open where he lost to Federer. LA offers Murray the perfect opportunity to reverse his futility streak this year and begin to ramp things up for Flushing Meadows. He could face Ernests Gulbis in the quarter-finals who he holds a 4-0 record against.
American Sam Querrey is the second seed and also the defending champion here while Marcos Baghdatis is in the number three position.
Mardy Fish - who has been having a stellar summer thus far - plays Benjamin Becker in the opening round, although I wonder if he might play the injury card after making back--to-back finals in Newport and Atlanta.
Meanwhile James Blake will try to reverse his recent struggles against Leonardo Mayer in the first round.
Croatian tennis fans will be rooting for Ivan Ljubicic to capture the title in Umag where he has never won before. Ljubicic is seeded third and opens with a bye in the first round.
Nikolay Davydenko continues to enter tournaments each week and is still looking for his game to click as he comes back from a wrist injury. Davydenko again crashed out early this past week in Hamburg but you have to figure sooner or later he is bound to rediscover his top-ten form.
Austrian Jurgen Melzer is one of the hottest players on tour right now. Having excellent results at the past two Grand Slams, Melzer made the finals in Hamburg this past week where he lost to first-time champion Andrey Golubev.
Italian veteran Filippo Volandri also makes a rare main-draw appearance this year and opens against wildcard Franco Skugar of Croatia in the first round. Volandri used to be quite the clay-court player but has been limited to mostly futures events in his home country in 2010.
This will be the last week involving any clay-court events at the ATP level until late September. The tour focuses on Washington D.C. and the Legg Mason Classic in a week's time, followed by Masters stops in Toronto and Cincinnati. Keep checking back as ProTennisFan will be covering the Rogers Cup in Toronto with live daily reports.
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