USO CC Day 4, Late Show

Good evening. It's again time to move onto a fresh post to continue your Crisis Center conversations, as this morning's CC has gathered over 1000 comments, and is loading ever-more slowly. Please keep the talk here focused on tennis until after the day's matches are over. Afterwards, it's fine to go off-topic.

The upsets continue. Today, world number one Ana Ivanovic was upset in the second round by qualifier Julie Coin, ranked 188. While the other upsets don't really compare in magnitude, we also saw Mardy Fish take out 24th seed Paul-Henri Mathieu, and Nicole Vaidisova falling in straight sets to wildcard Severine Bremond.

Losing first sets seemed to be the fashion of the day, but in spite of it, those safely through are Amelie Mauresmo (over Kaia Kanepi) and James Blake (whose opponent Steve Darcis was forced to retire due to a back injury after splitting the first two sets with Blake, then going down a break in the third). Andy Murray also surrendered the initial set to Michael Llodra, and David Ferrer did the same against Andreas Beck. Straight-sets winners included David Nabandian, Venus Williams, Dinara Safina and Ivo Karlovic.

The current evening match on Arthur Ashe stadium is Serena Williams against Elena Vesnina. At the time of writing, Williams is leading by a set and a double break. The men's night match to follow will be Rafael Nadal against the charmingly-named qualifier Ryler DeHeart, the world number 261, whose career record shows that before this US Open, he had never won a match on the main ATP tour.

Enjoy the rest of the day's tennis.

-- Rosangel Valenti