Jelena Jankovic

On the verge of victory, Mardy Fish took a lusty swing and staggered out of the follow-through, his left calf cramping and his ability to continue in doubt. Three points later he limped into the quarterfinals, the last American standing at the Sony Ericsson Open at Key Biscayne, Fla. A gimpy Fish whacked a service winner on match point to win a grueling duel against Juan Martin del Potro , 7-5, 7-6 (5). Fish is the lone U.S. player among the 16 men and women in the quarterfinals.

Somewhere around 9:23 p.m. Thursday, in a tennis stadium nearly filled with perhaps 14,000, Rafael Nadal shook a giant weight off his shoulders. He got rid of an ongoing toothache, blew away a cloud that had been hanging around for some time now. Nadal, the man who makes Roger Federer's heart beat slightly faster -- probably the only one -- finally won a match against James Blake, a noted Nadal-killer.

Somehow, in the midst of all the debris of injuries and pullouts, tennis managed to find a story line for this week's women's pro tournament in Carson. Jelena Jankovic can become No. 1 if she wins the title Sunday. There was a time when No. 1 was a huge deal. Several years ago, as Martina Hingis started to get outmuscled and outgunned by bigger, stronger players, she clung to it as her badge of honor. "I am still No. 1 in the world," she would chirp, defensively, after a loss.

NEW YORK -- The Jet Lag Open began Monday with the sluggishness you'd expect of a post-Beijing tennis major that ought to have an official Melatonin supplier. "I'm actually falling asleep right now," Jelena Jankovic said around 10 p.m. EDT, and the world's No. 2 player said that during her own news conference after beating 16-year-old San Diegan Coco Vandeweghe, 6-3, 6-1, a night match that kept Jankovic up well past her body's recent chosen bedtime of around 7 p.m. Barely had Jankovic presumably dozed off in a courtesy car when an Olympic achiever looked similarly woozy.

NEW YORK -- There's the usual talk at the U.S. Open about how women's tennis is in great hands, how it's better than ever because the players are stronger and hit the ball with speedier dispatch than ever before. Nonsense. All it takes is a clear head, a good memory -- and perhaps a few dusty tennis videotapes to pop in the VCR you've banished to the basement -- to see that the women's game is in trouble. Remember when fantastic play could be counted on, year after year, Grand Slam event after Grand Slam event, from the likes of Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf and Chris Evert?

NEW YORK -- After an absurd 11 deuces in the last game of yet another melodramatic win the other day, the top woman left at the U.S. Open soon encountered her mother, a scene proverbial in the distressed annals of tennis. Only this mother practiced an art quite rare in a cold, cold sport: She kidded. "Do you like your mom?" Snezana Jankovic bellowed. "Of course," said Jelena Jankovic, catching on. Then, in typical family din and jest, Snezana said, "Why do you do [that]

NEW YORK -- Not to sound like too much of a caveman, but at the halfway mark of the U.S. Open a grand theme has emerged: Men good, women . . . bad? Well, to put it more nicely, replace "bad" with "sputtering." From the women, top to bottom, there have been few truly stirring performances. Gone is the No. 1-seeded player, Ana Ivanovic, and the No. 3, Svetlana Kuznetsova. The player seeded second, Jelena Jankovic, has clunked her way through three matches, nearly falling prey to an upset herself.

Rafael Nadal beat defending champion Roger Federer, 7-5, 6-7 (3), 6-3, Sunday to win the Hamburg Masters in Germany and add the only major clay-court title missing from his impressive collection. It was the reverse of last year's final, when Federer won his fourth title in Hamburg and ended Nadal's 81-match winning streak on clay. Nadal rallied from big deficits in the first two sets, although he lost the tiebreaker in the second. He led 4-1 in the third and held on to raise his record against the top-ranked player to 8-1 on clay and 10-6 overall.

The first indication that it isn't always rain that creates havoc with tennis tournaments came when 18-year-old Beatrice Capra had to chase down her lime green visor, which had been blown off her head in Arthur Ashe Stadium. With gusts hitting 22 mph at the U.S. Open on Saturday, a ball might occasionally do a little shimmy, a little shake in the air, as if it were auditioning for "Dancing With the Stars. " A flying visor was the least of Capra's problems. Maria Sharapova, the 2006 U.S. Open champion who is seeded No. 14 this year, beat Capra, 6-0, 6-0. Better tennis is predicted in the fourth round because Sharapova will get a shot at top-seeded Caroline Wozniacki, the 2009 runner-up who was similarly untested in her 6-1, 6-0 win over Yung-Jan Chan of Taiwan.

NEW YORK -- As the 7-train screeches into the Shea Stadium/National Tennis Center stop, the year's last tennis Grand Slam says hello with quite the goofy billboard shouting from out the right-side window. It's Maria Sharapova pitching cameras, and while sticklers and other malcontents might point out that a torn rotator cuff means Sharapova won't actually, you know, play this U.S. Open, maybe the sign actually sort of works. Ever since May, four months after Sharapova had won the Australian Open and some had howled at the moon about a possible Sharapova Slam, the women's game has become a strange brew of hodgepodge and mishmash.