Donald Young has been on the tour as long as Sam Querrey, but because Sam Querrey is tall with a huge serve, he had more early success than Young.  Young has mostly been toiling in Challengers and has struggled to get a big win.  He did get a big win earlier in the year, beating Andy Murray in the opening round of Indian Wells, but most people attribute that to Murray’s mental funk losing in the Australian Open final for the second year in a row as the cause for his defeat to Young, rather than Young’s superlative play.  This idea was reinforced when Murray lost to another American, Alex Bogomolov, in the opening round at Miami.

It’s been a while since Young has received wildcards especially to American events.  He had received them much longer than other players without significant success, and the USTA was tired of this.  Young, meanwhile, complained about this, but has since dealt with working his way through qualifiers.  He qualified in Eastbourne, Miami, Indian Wells, was a lucky loser at Delray Beach, and qualified for the Australian Open.  The qualies have helped Young play weaker players, those ranked 200 or lower, and gain confidence and skill beating players that he should be better than.

Young beat a qualifier, Sitak, in the first round, but had his biggest win since Murray beating Melzer in the second round.  He beat Michael Russell fairly handily in the third round.  Russell had beaten him very easily in the opening round at Atlanta, which is Young’s hometown.  Today, he played Baghdatis.  Baghdatis isn’t quite playing that well yet.  He hasn’t played much since just after Wimbledon.  He lost to Yen-Hsun Lu at Los Angeles in his opening round.  He has played well in DC.  He beat Devvarman in a three setter in his opening round, and then needed 3 sets to beat Bellucci in the following round.  However, his game seemed off against Young, and he lost the first set relatively handily.

In the second set, Baghdatis got out to a 3-0 one break lead, but wasn’t able to maintain it.  Young was able to beat Baghdatis in a tiebreak to reach his best result at an ATP 500 event.

Joining Young is John Isner who had to play Viktor Troicki.  Isner took the first set, but Troicki came back to win the second set.  Isner then had an easy 6-1 third set.  Isner had had a lackluster year, but it all changed when he decided to play Newport and won the tournament as its top seed.  He then reached the finals of Atlanta, losing to Mardy Fish, despite having a decent chances to win that match.

Earlier in the day, two players that have seen better days faced each other.  Verdasco is playing well, but not great.  Radek Stepanek hasn’t played a lot of tennis and was out much of last year.  Stepanek likes playing the net, and has a flat style.  He was able to win that match 6-4, 6-4.

The last match of the day is top seed, Gael Monfils, facing Janko Tipsarevic.  The two have played each other close.  Monfils has a 3-2 head-to-head.  Tipsarevic beat Michael Berrer of Germany, then Grigor Dmitrov of Bulgaria (easily) to reach the quarterfinals.  Monfils beat Ryan Sweeting, then Dmitri Tursunov to reach the quarters.

In Kitzbuhel, Austria, Robin Haase of the Netherlands has reached the finals against Albert Montanes of Spain.  The final is being played Saturday, presumably to allow them to travel to the Canada for the Rogers Cup which is being held in Montreal.