Legg Mason Qualifying Day 1: Few Surprises, But Lots of Action

(Sorry for the delay everybody.  I left the grounds Saturday and pretty promptly fell asleep--forgot how tiring this tournament stuff can be...)

WASHINGTON--Twelve first round qualifying matches are in the books from Day 1 action at the 2010 Legg Mason Tennis Classic in Washington.  Only one of the twelve seeds lost, which on the one hand means that it wasn't especially exciting stuff, but on the other means that Sunday's final round of qualifying should be awesome.

It's hard to synthesize all the different action into cohesive thoughts, so instead I'm just going to go the bullet point route.

• It's great that these local guys get a chance to show their stuff at a big tournament like this, but I can't say that any of the three were especially impressive.  Junior A. Ore and Denis Kudla were simply overmatched by Kei Nishikori and Somdev Devvarman, respectively, and Michael Shabaz just didn't appear to be conditioned enough to hang with Donald Young as the match wore on.  Instead of Shabaz, would have given a wildcard into qualifying to Treat Huey, a locally raised kid who played his high school tennis at St. Stephen's/St. Agnes in suburban Washington, played his college tennis at UVA, and has emerged as a pretty solid doubles player, entering Wimbledon with Devvarman and getting his ranking up significantly.
• These guys playing qualifying sure are snappy dressers.  I guess if you're not going to make enough in prize money to pay for your plane ticket, you might as well look good doing it, right? John Millman (right) lost in straight sets to Igor Sijsling (he of the orange shoes), but he did manage to pull off a pretty bold yellow and red look.  Junior A. Ore wore that hideous shirt John Isner's been wearing lately, but he accessorized it with hot pink knee tape to match the stripes. 
• Ivo Klec is everything you could ever want in a qualifier.  He has an awesome name, is bouncy and hyperactive, displays enormous mood swings during matches, and plays a flashy counterpunching, go-for-broke style that is wildly unpredictable and extremely entertaining.  He does this awesome thing where he flips the racquet behind his back and tries to catch it with the same hand.  At least I assume that's how the trick is supposed to end--he didn't do it successfully once. And he knows that he's eventually supposed to lose the important points so that the bigger names stick around, which he did by falling to top qualifying seed Kevin Anderson in straight sets.
  
• Igor Kunitsyn made the semifinals here in 2008, and won the Kremlin Cup later that year, so it's sort of odd to see him as the #7 seed in qualifying (even though I realize he hasn't done much since).  His countryman Dmitry Tursunov was watching him from behind the fence, and mingling with an adoring public.
  
• The first eleven seeds up all won, but the final seed on court, #9 Carlos Salamanca of Colombia, lost.  He was the only of the seeds I had never heard of, and has played on nothing but clay since March, so it's not a huge shock that he was the one to break the trend, losing in straight sets to gangly Aussie Greg Jones.

That's all for now.  Be sure to stick around for an interview I did with Kei Nishikori, the biggest name in the qualifying draw, in just a little while.