If you missed part I, just scroll down a bit to read that. 

- Did you watch the Women’s Semifinals?  I did.  And it was pretty awful.  The Williams-Henin match was bad tennis in terms of technique and the amount of unforced errors, but at least it had some drama.  The Kuznetsova-Chakvatadze match may have been the worst semifinal match I’ve ever witnessed.  They combined for 31 winners and 81 unforced errors, which is staggering.  Here’s the difference between the Men and the Women, after Federer beat Davydenko in their Semi, the early report was that it was an ugly match, and neither played well.  I tend to agree, both players were definitely not 100% there, but they combined for 74 winners and 63 unforced errors, far better quality than the Women.

- Before you jump on me for being a sexist, the most exciting match that I saw live during the tournament was Jankovic vs. Venus Williams in the quarterfinals.  It was the same night as the Roddick-Federer match, so the night crowd was in full anticipation for that match, and it spilled over into the earlier match.  The crowd was fully in support of Williams, but Jankovic definitely won some fans as well (it helped that she took her loss just a bit more graciously than Serena did, and by ‘a bit’ I mean ‘a lot).  The match went to a third set tiebreak, and was filled with so much drama the first 25 minutes or so of Federer-Roddick seemed like a letdown.  I promise, I’m not lying, ask anyone else who was there.

- What loss was harder for Roddick – the one in Australia where he barely showed up, and got demolished in three sets, or the one last week where he played well enough to beat anyone else in the world, and still lost in straight sets?  Only he can answer that question, but remember this current loss when you complain that American’s are failing.  I’ll repeat it, Roddick would have beat any other player in the world, most likely in straight sets. 

- Kudos to American men, while no one made a semifinal for yet another Grand Slam, we had plenty of guys who made it through a couple of rounds.  I watched John Isner on TV, and I think he proved winning a couple rounds and taking a set off Federer that he will be around for awhile.  I also watched both of Donald Young’s matches live, and he definitely has the tools to be a top tier player.  Mentally, he is not quite there yet.  In the third set breaker against Lopez (who in his next match gave Federer a tough challenge), tied at one set a piece, Young was up 2-0 and had a somewhat easy overhead to go up 3-0, he shanked it, and fell apart for the most part from that point onward.  For someone with huge expectations, who had only won his first ATP level match a couple weeks before, making the 3rd round at the US Open had to be a huge confidence booster for him.

- Roger Federer is really good at tennis.

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