Fans love the best of the best.  They want to see Federer.  They want to see Nadal.  They want to see Djokovic.  They want to see them face each other.  But the tour is more than the top few players, and sometimes, in the smallest of matches, there are stories behind the match.

John Isner had been struggling with confidence.  He lost to Thomaz Bellucci in the reverse singles of the Davis Cup requiring a fifth rubber that Sam Querrey fortunately won.  Isner said he struggles with confidence from time to time, and despite his marathon win over Mahut at Wimbledon, his 5-set record was actually pretty poor, many played since that match.

Isner trains a great deal in the Delray Beach area, and you can begin to see the kinds of things he’s working on, namely, attacking the second serve, taking advantage of shots in the middle to hit a bit shot and end the point early, and as always, trying to work on his movement.

Despite all that, and despite a monster serving performance, Isner still found himself in a close match.  Isner took the first set in a tiebreak.  Levine took the second set, 7-5.  Isner got a quick break in the third set, but found himself having to hang on to win the third set while Levine also was in danger of going double-break down, but managed to save that game.

Levine has an interesting story.  Levine was born in Canada, but his brother needed medical treatment when he was young, so his family moved to the US to support his brother and Levine played as an American.  Levine is a lefty who returns serve pretty well (despite being aced a lot, partly because he stands in so close to the baseline to return serve).  He lacks any one big shot that would let him be a consistent top 30 players, so he’s mired around 100 in the world due to that.

Canada has long struggled to find world-class players at the top of the ranks.  They now have one with Milos Raonic.  The problem is a viable second player to play Davis Cup.  Canada has three choices.  There’s the veteran, Frank Dancevic, who has talent (and won a critical match over Granollers in the Davis Cup tie against Spain), but has never been terribly relevant in the top 50.  There’s the upstart, Vasek Pospisil, who single-handedly helped Canada get to the world round a few years ago when Raonic was injured in a tie against Israel.  Pospisil had to play and win both singles matches (including an upset of Dudi Sela) in Israel, and also play doubles with Nestor.

Even so, his ranking has not taken off like Raonic.  He’s starting to get into the main draw of some tournaments and winning the occasional match, but hasn’t been reliably winning.  Without that strong upward mobility and good matches, Pospisil is likely the weakest of the choices Canada has to play the second singles behind Raonic.

That leaves Jesse Levine.  It’s a tossup between the two.  They are similarly ranked.  Dancevic has reached two finals, but not since 2009.  More than likely, they’ll pick Dancevic mostly because he produced a good upset in the first round and they may figure he has bigger upside against either a steady Seppi or a flashy Fognini.

Winning after winning is hard

Last year, David Ferrer won Valencia, then won Paris, then played 3 round robin matches at London, barely missing the semis, then played 2 singles in the finals of the Davis Cup, winning both.

This is an incredible achievement.  A much more typical player, that is, not ranked in the top 3-4 wins one week, or goes deep, then loses early the next week, realizing that winning in back-to-back weeks is tough.

Thus, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who won in Marseille last week, just lost to Llodra in Dubai in the opening round.  Matosevic, who reached the semis of Memphis last week, lost to Go Soeda in the opening round of Delray Beach.  Kei Nishikori, who won Memphis last week, lost to Ivo Karlovic, retiring before a set was completed.

Some players continue to play well.  Jack Sock won his opening round at Delray Beach and Tomas Berdych had an easy win in Dubai.

Dubai

Dubai is the first tournament since the Australian Open that the two top players are playing with Djokovic and Federer playing.  Djokovic has not played since the Australian Open outside of one Davis Cup match.

Djokovic shows he’s still the man to beat with a win over countryman, Viktor Troicki, 61 64.  Fellow Serb Janko Tipsarevic did not fare as well.  He lost to Nikolay Davydenko in straight sets despite being up breaks in the second set.

Bernard Tomic stumbled after having to retire early in the first set against Victor Hanescu due to an undisclosed illness.  del Potro was pushed to the brink by Baghdatis winning in a third set tiebreak.

Acapulco

Nadal continues his winning ways beating a qualifier 2 and 2.

The Spaniards are out in force in this Mexican event.  Ferrer, Almagro, Robredo, and Gimeno-Traver all won their opening round match.  Stan Wawrinka, who was a runner up in Buenos Aires last week, lost in straight sets to Italian, Fabio Fognini.