Mikhail Youzhny - Only seed to remain at 2010 St. Petersburg Open
As Friday ends, Mikhail Youzhny is the only seeded player to remain in the title run at the 2010 St. Petersburg Open. Having defeated eighth seeded Romanian Victor Hanescu in the quarterfinal on Friday, Mikhail was the only seed
to reach the semifinals. All the other seeds were ousted from the tournament earlier in the week.
The first seed to fall out of the running was Jeremy Chardy from France. Seeded seventh in the tournament, Chardy lost his first round match to Kazakh Mikhail Kukushkin on Monday. Chardy managed to win the first set on tie break;
however, luck did not favour him in the rest of the match as he was humiliated by Kukushkin with a 6-0, 6-1 defeat in the following sets. Chardy saw a poor start to the season, making early exits in many of the ATP events. His one and only title win this year
came at the 2010 Regions Morgan Keegan Championships. Though, at the year’s end it seems his luck is starting another spiral downwards since only last week he saw another early exit at the 2010 Kremlin Cup. Now with another early exit at St. Petersburg, Chardy
can expect a drop in the rankings.
Following Chardy on the hypothetical bench was the Uzbek Denis Istomin. Seeded sixth in the tournament, Istomin fell out of the running after he retired from his first round match against Ukrainian Illya Marchenko. Istomin suffered
an injury in the right knee in the second set after which he retired from the tournament. Having managed a run all the way into the quarterfinals in the 2010 Kremlin Cup, Istomin clearly ran into some bad luck with an early exit this week.
Wednesday saw three more seed exits. Fourth seed, Lu Yen-Hsun was the first of the three to fall out of the title run. Yen-Hsun lost his second round match against wild card entry, Russian Dmitry Tursunov. Tursunov enjoyed a straight
set win of 6-1, 6-4over the seeded player.
Following Yen-Hsun was the defending champion and second seed, Sergiy Stakhovsky. The Ukrainian lost in the first round to Benjamin Becker, as the most surprising exit of a seeded player from the tournament. Although he was the
defending champion, it can be concluded that the Ukrainian was not in his full form lately. He exited the 2010 Kremlin Cup last week, also in the second round.
Another surprising exit that shocked fans was that of fifth seed, Viktor Troicki. Having won the title last week at Moscow, it was a shocker when German Rainer Schuttler removed him from the tournament in only their first round
meeting. The final match score was 6-3, 4-6, 6-3.
Janko Tipsarevic, Hanescu and Youzhny were the only three seeds to survive into the quarterfinals. However, Friday was the last day in the event for two of them as they lost their quarterfinal matches.
Third seed, Tipsarevic met Kukushkin on the courts and it seems that the “seed-killer” struck again. Kukushkin deleted Tipsarevic from the event after defeating him in a three set match.
Hanescu met Youzhny for their quarterfinal. What followed was the longest match of the event, having lasted two hours and forty five minutes. At the end, the Russian managed to exhaust the Romanian and defeated him by 6-7, 6-3,
7-6. With the last remaining seed out of the running, Youzhny is the only remaining survivor of the original eight. Reflecting on the results fans can expect history to repeat itself. Unseeded Stakhovsky won the title last year and as seeds fall out of this
tournament we might see another unseeded win.
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