This is what you get with a Masters 1000 event.  You can have a tough first match right off the bat, and even more if you are a top seed.  Juan Martin del Potro has been on the comeback trail.  He’s ranked 19th in the  world, but would be 11th if the rankings were only computed in 2011.  del Potro beat Seppi who didn’t even complete the first round match to set up the most anticipated of the Tuesday matches.

My feeling was that Federer would play both more patient and more aggressive.  In Montreal, Federer didn’t seem to want any rallies to go past about 5-6 shots per person.  Federer often does this leading up to Slams.  I think he does this to optimize his performance at Slams so he doesn’t wear his body down.  Then, he plays more conservative during the tournament before the Slam, willing to extend the rallies, play a bit more conservative, but wait for his moment to attack.

Federer’s ideal match is to hold serve relatively easily and hope to get chances on returns of serve.  To this end, Federer was able to pressure del Potro on his serve.  Delpo, for the most part, did well to hold his serve.

I was surprised with Delpo’s aggressiveness.  I believe Delpo felt that he had to be aggressive against Federer because Fed was going to play aggressive.  Up to this point, Delpo had been more content to get into longer rallies, and be patient, but it looked like he attacked crosscourt forehands if he could while Federer took balls up the center and hit hard to the sidelines.

Federer also came to net effectively, either luring del Potro to net with a short ball and volleying the reply or coming off deeper shots himself.

In the end, it came to one break a set, with Federer playing quite a bit crisper than he did back in Montreal.  It may have helped that the courts were fast.

In the next match, Federer will take on James Blake.  Blake has struggled for some time now, but he beat Baghdatis in the first round.  Baghdatis hasn’t been playing that well in 2011, but arguably, Blake has been playing worse.  Blake then really made easy work of Fognini.  Blake credited Fognini’s weak second serve with letting him be aggressive on return.

Today, there was a lot of matches played.  Let’s quickly go over them.

John Isner played a tough Radek Stepanek whose versatility and aggressiveness allowed him to edge out Isner in a third set tiebreak.  Wawrinka, who went relatively deep in the Montreal event, lost in the first round to Andrey Golubev.

Ivan Dodig, who upset Rafa Nadal last week, beat Ernests Gulbis this week.  Gulbis’s game appears to be taking a bit of a backward turn.  He won LA, then lost to Fish in Montreal, and now he’s lost in the first round.  In the battle of two Spaniards, Almagro beat Montanes in straight sets.  This has been a pretty good year for Almagro, perhaps his best year ever.

Karlovic made short work of Florian Mayer showing he can do more than just serve.  Simon needed a lot of work to beat Jurgen Melzer.  Simon got into an argument with Melzer late in the match, mostly about Melzer questioning each ball that was close.  Simon looked a lot better this week than last week where he let his temper and his inconsistency cost him a win against Petzschner in the first round.

In one of the toughest first round matches, Tsonga, who retired in the semis against Djokovic, beat Cilic relatively handily.  Gilbert was critical of Tsonga retiring figuring a hurt arm shouldn’t prevent him from finishing the match.  Davydenko may be playing better tennis.  He beat a tricky player in Stakhovsky.  To be fair, Stakhovsky played better last year than this, but until recently, Davydenko struggled to win opening round matches.

Davydenko takes on Mardy Fish next.  This could be an interesting match, and is a tough one for Davydenko.  Davydenko seems confident enough in his play that he’s likely to amp up the aggression like he did against Djokovic, so this could be a tough match for Fish depending on how well Davydenko hits his shots.

Anderson beat Malisse in straight sets, needing a tiebreak in the second.  Llodra upset Youzhny, needing a tiebreak in the third set to win.

Yesterday, Roddick lost to Kohlschreiber.  He won the first set tiebreak and was up a break, but couldn’t keep his consistency up.  Kohlschreiber took the second set and won the third set rather handily.  Roddick played well last year at Cincy reaching the semis losing to Fish, so he’ll lose a fair bit of points.  This will drop his ranking 350 points.  Roddick is already ranked 15th in the world, so this will probably drop him to about 22nd in the world, the first time his ranking has been this low in almost a decade.

Roddick was upset, as he usually is, during the match.  He got a point penalty after a warning.  As it was, his game was going south in the third set.  He’ll need to figure out what he needs to do for the US Open.  It doesn’t look that positive for him at the moment.  The only thing he can say is that he had one of his best US Opens (2008) when he had his worst lead up to Slam.  To be fair, Roddick dumped his brother as coach and asked Patrick McEnroe, then the Davis Cup coach, to serve as temporary coach, and Roddick played pretty well losing to Novak Djokovic in the quarters.

If Federer is being critiqued some for his declining skills as he reaches 30, all those same things can be said about Roddick plus more.  Roddick lacks the variety of Federer.  He relies a lot on his serve and steadiness off the ground.  And now that he’s struggling with his ground game.  And really, unlike Federer, Roddick has been susceptible to injury.  He gets hurt nearly every year and this impacts how well he performs.  Last year, he recovered reasonably well at Cincy itself having not played much until Cincy, but then lost early to Tipsarevic in the second round of the US Open.

On Wednesday, the top two seeds and Andy Murray play.  Nadal opens up with qualifier Julien Benneteau.  He’s looking to make a deep run in Cincy, and should have no problems with Benneteau.  Murray starts off with a potentially difficult David Nalbandian.  Murray played Nalbandian last year in his run to the Toronto title.  At the time, Nalbandian had played lots of tennis, but while he was on a hot streak, this year, not so much.  Murray is looking to get back to playing good tennis.  Of the top 4 seeds, he was the weakest, going out tamely against Kevin Anderson.

The good news is that he might take Nalbandian more seriously.  Last year, he played ultra-aggressive against Nalbandian.  With his fatigue from playing so many matches in Davis Cup, then winning Washington DC, he was not in best form in Toronto.

Djokovic will play Ryan Harrison.  Harrison beat Chela in the first round.  Djokovic should win this reasonably easily, but Harrison is a big server, so Djokovic will need to be able to handle that.