BOTTOM HALF OF 2017 U.S. OPEN TENNIS MEN’S DRAW BECOMING MORE & MORE [INSERT ADJECTIVE HERE] BY THE DAY

Written by: Staff on 2nd September 2017

BOTTOM HALF OF 2017 U.S. OPEN TENNIS MEN'S DRAW BECOMING MORE & MORE [INSERT ADJECTIVE HERE] BY THE DAY

epa06178079 Lucas Pouille of France hits a return to Mikhail Kukushkin of Kazakhstan on the fifth day of the US Open Tennis Championships at the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, New York, USA, 01 September 2017. The US Open runs through September 10. EPA-EFE/JUSTIN LANE |

By Ricky Dimon

Let’s play a game: describe the bottom half of the men’s singles draw with only one word.

It’s a game I started on Twitter, and both the quantity and the quality of the responses were outstanding. Within just a couple of minutes I thought the word “joke” might become a worldwide trending topic.

In addition to “joke,” we also got “fake,” “opportunity,” “chance,” “new,” “surreal,” “bananas,” “ugh,” “sad,” “mess,” “open,” “satirical,” “messy,” “carpediem,” “blah,” “exciting,” “easy,” “savage,” “catastrophic,” “cray,” “unexpected,” “available,” “ATP250,” “Challenger,” “sports,” “tennis,” “anonymous,” “Kitzbuhel,” “change,” “chaos,” “scary,” “mistake,” “lol,” “uncharted,” “busted,” “pathetic,” “shambles,” “facepalm,” and–to incur a couple of audible obscenity warnings: “cluster duck” and “dogshit.”

All of those are accurate.

“Blah”: That’s Sam Querrey. Duh.

“Busted”: That’s Pablo Carreno Busta. Obviously.

“New”: That’s 18-year-old Denis Shapovalov.

“Dogshit”: That’s Kevin Anderson. His dog–yes, his dog–was in attendance for his third-round win over Borna Coric (ask his wife, Kelsey, if any cleanup was necessary).

“Anonymous”: That’s 35-year-old Paolo Lorenzi. He’s been around since the Stone Age and only hardcore tennis fans have ever heard of him.

“Exciting”: That’s 5’7” Diego Schwartzman, who won a four-set battle on Friday to break the draw wide opener with a knockout of No. 5 seed Marin Cilic.

“Mistake”: That’s Mischa Zverev. A Zverev was supposed to be in the fourth round of this U.S. Open, but it was supposed to be the fourth-seeded Alexander.

“Messy”: That’s Lucas Pouille. His hair and–prior to the U.S. Open–the state of his tennis throughout this summer.

And this–using tennis terms–is also accurate.

– Of the eight men remaining, zero have reached a Grand Slam final.

– Only one (Querrey) has made to a slam semifinal and that happened to him for the first time ever just two months ago at Wimbledon.

– The betting favorite to reach the final (Querrey) won a grand total of five matches at the U.S. Open from 2011 through 2016. For those counting, you need to win six in the same year in the reach year.

– After just three rounds, Carreno Busta is the highest-ranked man remaining. He is barely inside the top 20 (19th). He had never advanced past round three of any major other than the French Open prior to this fortnight and had never advanced past round three of any major including the French Open until June of this season.

“It opens up the draw,” said Shapovalov, who is still alive and into the fourth round after getting a fourth-set retirement from Kyle Edmund on Friday. “It helps players like myself to kind of have a chance and not play, you know, Novak (Djokovic) or Andy Murray in the early stages.”

In the early stages? How about in every stage until the final?!?! And judging from Roger Federer’s and Rafael Nadal’s current form, how about even in the final, too?!?!

Shapovalov plays Carreno Busta next and it would only go downhill from there if the Canadian continues on to the quarterfinals and semis. He would face the winner of a match between the No. 16 seed (Lucas Pouille) and the No. 29 seed (Diego Schwartzman). He would then run into at best Querrey and at worst Paolo Lorenzi. Yes, Lorenzi is in the fourth round of a Grand Slam.

Among those not in the fourth round of this Grand Slam: Cilic, Jo-WIlfried Tsonga, Jack Sock, John Isner, and the younger Zverev brother.

“I was aware of the draw,” Isner said after wasting his opportunity in a loss to the older Zverev brother on Friday night. “How can you not be? Everyone’s talking about it. (But) it’s not like I was on social media or anything.”

But I am on social media–and you should be to. When Grand Slam draws become so “surreal,” “scary,” “messy,” and “catastrophic,” Twitter becomes especially fun. And it will only get more and more fun by the day all the way to the the final.