Legg Mason Day 5: In Late Action, Seeds Cropped by Underdogs

WASHINGTON--Only five of twelve seeds in action on Wednesday in Washington at the Legg Mason Tennis Classic advanced to the third round, with rust clearly hanging off some of the more potent racquets in the draw.

The biggest upset of the day was one of the last.  In a match interrupted by the ever-so-rare rain delay in the third set tiebreak, John Isner came back to defeat #3 seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 4-6, 7-6(2), 7-6(4).  Tsonga had not played since Wimbledon, where he lost to another big server, Ivo Karlovic.  It's tough to think of a worse opponent than Isner to play in your first match back in terms of getting back into the rhythm of tennis.

With the win, Isner improved to an absurd 7-0 in third set tiebreaks in his three years at the Legg Mason Tennis Classic.  That has to be a record.

While the rain delay hit Isner-Tsonga at 3-3 in the third set tiebreak, the same delay hit #14 seed Dmitry Tursunov's match against qualifier Sebastien de Chaunac at 5-5 in the third set.  de Chaunac was able to fend off two break points to hold for 6-5, then Tursunov showed why he's the most bipolar player in the game, with a bizarre stretch of profanity and yelling as he was broken for the loss at 7-5, followed by signing autographs for the same bleu-blanc-et-rouge wearing fans he berated earlier.

#13 seed Igor Andreev went down to Wayne Odesnik, who befriended the local high school tennis team from Walt Whitman in Bethesda, and turned them and their families into a rowdy cheering section that seemed to somewhat unnerve Andreev, who fell to the unheralded American 2-6, 7-5, 6-4.

Other seeds to go down Wednesday (apart from the previously reported on Robredo and Fish) included #15 Dudi Sela, who lost a thriller to Lleyton Hewitt in three sets, and #12 Viktor Troicki, who retired with an ankle injury three games into the match and was not able to defend any of the points he had from making the final here last year.