Let’s face it.  Niklolay Davydenko hasn’t been playing at the top of his game for nearly a year.  He’s lost in numerous opening rounds.  So, while his game has headed south, Djokovic, by contrast has gone swimmingly.

Even so, there were a little concern.  First, Davydenko has started to play better.  He won one round in Washington DC and pushed Verdasco to a third set.  He also looked decently good against Cipolla in his opening round.  Second, Djokovic has played very little since Wimbledon, only a Davis Cup doubles match.  He could, in theory, come out a little flat, like Murray, though flat for Djokovic is generally different than flat for Djokovic.

Davydenko’s strategy seemed to be “play like I used to play” and hope the shots fall in.  Davydenko doesn’t have a huge serve, so he relies on superb ball placement and taking the ball off the rise to get an advantage.  Without a big serve, he needs to play every point.

The match couldn’t have started out better for Davydenko.  Right away, he had Djokovic had 0-30 in his first game.  However, Djokovic managed to win that game.  Davydenko then won 4 games in a row, with two breaks.  To be fair, Djokovic did look a bit off.  He probably wasn’t expecting to be pressured that much, and so it was all he could do to stay in rallies, and due to the time off, he was missing some.

Suddenly, the errors came back.  Djokovic was able to keep more balls in play while Davydenko began missing, and soon enough, Djokovic was back at 4-all.  However, when he served again, Djokovic had two putaway points at net, and had Davydenko guess right twice, and eventually surrendered another serve.  However, at 5-4, with a high volley to seal the set, Davydenko netted the shot, and then gave the game and set away to Djokovic.

The second set went mostly Djokovic’s way.  He got up two breaks early on before Davydenko managed to get one break back.  In the end, Djokovic won it going away, 6-1.

For the most part, Djokovic just let Davydenko implode.  Davydenko wasn’t quite ready to get into long rallies with Djokovic because his game is not quite steady enough now to do that.  He was taking a gamble that he could get good shots quickly, and surprise Djokovic, which he did for about a set.

Earlier in the day, Federer beat Canadian Pospisil.  This wasn’t a surprise.  The two stayed pretty even the first set, but Federer was getting break opportunities and his Canadian opponent wasn’t.  He eventually secured a break to take the first set.  Federer then had a pretty easy second set, 6-3, breaking early on and just holding to serve it out.  these days, Fed prefers a single break and just coasting on his own serve rather than attempting additional breaks.

The French did pretty well today. Tsonga has an fairly easy time with Tomic, though he needed a tiebreak in the second to win.  Monfils had similar straight set scores against American Bogomolov.  Gasquet made easy work of Bellucci, and may be the hottest of the three players.

Stan Wawrinka beat Michael Russell easily.  Isner concluded his match with Baghdatis with a straight set win.  Berdych came back against Dolgopolov to win in 3 sets.  Karlovic needed three tiebreaks to get past Petzschner.

The Murray brothers needed a super tiebreak to beat Canadian duo Chvojka/Duclos.  So while Andy Murray has fizzled from the singles, he is hanging in via the doubles.

The afternoon matches were put on hold due to rain in Montreal.  Still up to play are Rafael Nadal against Ivan Dodig.  The evening match was supposed to be Mardy Fish against Feliciano Lopez.  Lopez completed his 3-set win over Stepanek which was delayed due to rain.

Djokovic will play the winner of Juan Martin del Potro and Marin Cilic, which is being delayed due to rain.