Novak Djokovic: Healthy Djokovic Poised to Add 2011 US Open Title to Resume
Heading into the US Open, there were concerns about the health of Novak Djokovic. He has played a lot of tennis in 2011 and when he was last seen, he was retiring from the Masters 1000 Series tournament in Cincinnati.
After just two matches, it is clear that Djokovic is feeling just fine. He has thoroughly wiped the floor with both opponents and clearly looks like the best player in the field.
After a first-round win over Conor Niland, who was ill all throughout the match, I was still somewhat skeptical. An elite player should always beat a player who is battling food poisoning.
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His second-round match against Carlos Berlocq, a solid top-75 player, promised to be a much stiffer test. That just wasn't the case. Djokovic rolled to a 6-0, 6-0, 6-2 win. The only drama seen in that match was the drama centered around whether or not Berlocq would manage to win a game.
Given the result of the match, we can guess that either Djokovic is in top form or Carlos Berlocq was also dealing with a bad case of food poisoning. With the lack of a retirement on Berlocq's part and the smiles seen late in the third set from both players, I'm guessing it's much more of the former.
The favorites other than Djokovic have looked just about as good, but no one has dominated quite like the Djoker. All parts of his game are clicking on all cylinders and if it weren't for the crowd support Berlocq got in that third set of Thursday's match, he very well might have shut him out.
He has a tricky match up next with crafty veteran Nikolay Davydenko, but I'm not about to bet that Nikolay, as good as he is, will slow him down. Thanks to injuries, Davydenko hasn't played a lot of quality tennis lately and a match against Djokovic isn't the way to get the ball rolling in that respect.
By nature, Grand Slam tennis tournaments are unpredictable, but I think it's a safe play to go ahead and pencil Djokovic in to the final. He's just playing too well to get tripped up before that.
