Fairy Tale Ends for Melanie Oudin – No Surprises for the Men’s Side

Clock Strikes Midnight for Cinderella - Out in Straight Sets

It was a magical week for Melanie Oudin, she made it all the way to the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open and beat some of the best players in the game on the way. But Oudin ran into mirror image of herself on Day 10, the 9th ranked player in the world, Caroline Wozniacki.

Oudin was able to fight back from a set down in each of her previous matches, but it was not to happen in the quarterfinals of the 2009 U.S. Open. Wozniacki was content to keep the ball in play and use a series of angles to beat Oudin in two easy sets, 6-2, 6-2.

On the men’s side, Fernando Verdasco had high hopes in his quarterfinal match against the fourth seed, Novak Djokovic. Djokovic appeared to be on his heels throughout the first set, but somehow managed to steal the first set tiebreaker by a score of 7-2.

Instead of going away, the loss in the tiebreaker seemed to pump Verdasco up. He tore into Djokovic, who seemed to wilt under the pressure losing the second set 6-1. After a rash of unforced errors and poor service games, the Serb did his best to hang in there and survive the 3rd set.

At 5-5 in third, Djokovic played his best game of the match and ended up running away with the whole thing by a final score of 7-6, 1-6, 7-5, 6-2. His reward for the big win is a semifinal clash with the man who’s won 39 straight matches and five straight titles here at the U.S. Open, none other than Roger Federer.

It took four sets for the top seed to put away Robin Soderling 6-0, 6-3, 6-7, 7-6. Federer advances to his 22nd straight Grand Slam semifinal. 22 straight semifinals?? That’s two short of six straight years - where his worst performance at a major was a semifinal appearance. I could write the same thing about six more times and it still wouldn't make sense.