On the Way Up

Last year, Juan Martin del Potro arose from obscurity on the strength of four consecutive tournament wins. He won two clay events in Stuttgart and Kitzbuhel, then came to the US to win Los Angeles (beating Roddick) and Washington DC.

Once a player gets to a certain level, they start to avoid the ATP 250 events. ATP 250 events like Indianapolis last week and Los Angeles this week generally attract players ranked 20 and lower. It's rare for a top 10 player to play unless it's out of patriotism like Roddick and Blake in the US, and even they sometimes avoid these smaller tournaments.

Last year, del Potro was an unknown, and playing Los Angeles and DC was appropriate. This year, he has chosen not to defend his title in Los Angeles. He is, however, scheduled to play DC which is an ATP 500 tournament, and therefore is attracting a better class of player with Tsonga, Roddick, and del Potro in the draw. However, even DC is not enough to bring out the top 4: Federer, Nadal, Murray, Djokovic, even though Murray has played the tournament a few times and has even been a finalist.

This week, there are two clay court tournaments being played: Gstaad and Umag. Wawrinka is the top seed in Gstaad, Davydenko the top seed in Umag (Croatia), and Tommy Haas is the number 1 seed in Los Angeles. Next week, Washington DC, then the week after is a Masters 1000 event in Montreal, where all the big names will appear, especially the highly anticipated return of Rafael Nadal.