Thirty years ago, in the early 1980s, tennis in the US was still predominantly American.  Indeed, in the 1970s and before, only a handful of counties were producing top players, including the US, Australia, and well, maybe France.  In those days, Swedish tennis was riding the surge of Bjorn Borg with players like Mats Wilander leading the way even as the old Swedish master had retired.  But, you could look at the bottom half of the US Open draw which had 64 players and find more than half the players with the stars and stripes by their names.  These days, the US Open draw would be lucky to see a dozen players in the entire 128 draw.  That’s how competitive world tennis has become.  With the amount of money in professional tennis, many countries have strong incentives to coach players to play at the highest levels.

The 2012 BB&T Atlanta Open is starting to resemble this very American draw, mostly though the use of wildcards.  Also, being so early in the US Open series, there are still plenty of European clay events that are going on, so those players that prefer clay are still in Europe playing.

In the top half, all four quarterfinalists are American which include John Isner playing wildcard, Jack Sock.  Sock, a top American junior, had beaten Scott Johnson, an NCAA champion from USC, who himself had upset Donald Young in the opening round.

Andy Roddick beat Nicolas Mahut and will face Michael Russell who upset Kevin Anderson.

In the bottom half of the draw, two Japanese players will play each other: Kei Nishikori who beat Richard Berankis will play Go Soeda who beat Igor Kunitsyn.  Kunitsyn had beaten Brian Baker in the opening round in three sets.

Although there was a chance for James Blake to play Mardy Fish in the other quarterfinals, it didn’t happen. Blake lost in three sets to Australian Matthew Ebden while Fish retired to veteran Gilles Muller despite winning the first set.

In Hamburg, the quarterfinals are also set.  Nicolas Almagro to play Philipp Kolhschreiber, Juan Monaco to play Jeremy Chardy.  In the bottom half, Albert Ramos (who beat Lukas Rosol in the previous round) to play Marin Cilic and Florian Mayer to play Tommy Haas.

In Gstaad, Tipsarevic to play Henrych, a resurgent Mathieu to play erratic Gulbis, Lopez to play Bellucci, an improving Dimitrov to play Kubot.