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Venus Williams, Ana Ivanovic and Marat Safin have all cruised to straight-set victories.

Venus looked a little shaky -- she had six double faults -- and Ivanovic was broken early before both settled down and steamrolled their opponents.

The most impressive performance of the afternoon goes to American Robby Ginepri, now ranked 64th, who won a blowout match 6-0, 6-3, 6-1.

Ginepri was a semifinalist in 2005 (he lost to Agassi) and was inside the Top 15 before turning in a 9-16 performance this year and falling to pieces.

According to this very good profile in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Ginepri a month ago named as his coach Jose Higueras, the guru who once guided Pete Sampras, Michael Chang and Jim Courier.

It’s the match of the tournament: the streaking Venus Williams versus the future star Ana Ivanovic.

The Serbian has never beaten Venus—or Serena for that matter.

“They both play very powerful,” she told me two weeks ago. “It’s still something I have to practice hard on because they don’t give me much time to play my game. They dominate—they are the ones dictating.”

Her complaint is a well-worn one in women’s tennis: The Williams sisters are a collective buzzsaw to many aspiring players—the sort of players who would have done perfectly well in the women’s tennis era of moon shots and long rallies but who can’t crack a Grand Slam in today's game.

Later this afternoon, Ivanovic will put her massive forehand and her nerves to work as she guns for the biggest win of her career.

After a slow day yesterday, we're back to a really strong lineup of matches today.

Rafael Nadal debuts at the Open at Arthur Ashe, right after Ana Ivanovic and Venus Williams finish up against their unknown opponents.

Streaky Marat Safin plays at 11 this morning on Louis Armstrong, followed by Justine Henin. Next door, at the very loud Grandstand there will be a delightful lineup full of Americans: Meghann Shaughnessy, Robby Ginepri, Mardy Fish and upstart Ahsha Rolle.

On Court 11, Elena Dementieva plays the second match, followed by former French Open Champion Carlos Moya. Over at Court 13 there are back-to-back matches featuring Spaniard Tommy Robredo and the lovable Marion Bartoli.

Match of the Day: giant American John Isner takes on South African Rik De Voest (10 inches shorter!) in the battle of 100-something seeds at night time in Louis Armstrong. The winner gets a crack at Roger Federer. Expect electricity.

After last night's exhilarating action, we've got some great tennis to follow up.

At 11am, Justine Henin plays at Ashe while Novak Djokovic plays at Louis Armstrong. In the afternoon, Ana Ivanovic, Tim Henman, Marion Bartoli and Serena Williams all play.

Lleyton Hewitt will play on Louis Armstrong at night, while Venus Williams and the injured Rafael Nadal play at Ashe.

Match to watch for: Mardy Fish v. Tommy Robredo at 1pm on Ashe. Fish is hot and he gets the big stage to take on the nunmber 8 player in the world. A solid chance for a major upset.

There's probably only one person in the world who wasn't impressed with Venus Williams thoroughly swift dispatch of Ana Ivanovic. Her dad.

“I don’t think she played that great today,” said Richard Williams. “The second serve wasn’t doing anything. Venus wasn’t turning. She wasn’t meeting the serve return. She hit too many serves out.”

But Mr. Williams, she won 6-4, 6-2 against the no. 4 player in the world.

“Sometimes tennis scores doesn’t reflect how a person plays. In my opinion, Venus played bad.”

What was the difference then?

“[Ivanovic] outplayed Venus, she just didn’t play the key points well,”

He had kind things to say about Ana.

“Keep in mind, she’s 19”, he said. “She got to the finals of the French. She probably needs a little more experience because she hits well, she plays well, she’s not moving that bad. She played a lot better than Venus.”

Perhaps it's a motivation technique, maybe it's something we're all missing, but what will it take for the quarterfinals-bound Venus to play better?

“If Venus wants to win this tournament she’ll not only have to play key points well, she’ll have to play the other points better.”

We've written about Novak Djokovic and Ana Ivanovic, but we haven't mentioned the other Serbian making a major impact on the current field: the 22-year-old no. 3 player in women's tennis, Jelena Jankovic.

Jankovic's ranking has rocketed this year due to a remarkably extensive playing schedule. She's played 80 matches in 2007, compared to Justine Henin's 48 and Maria Sharapova's 42.

Jankovic, who kicks off her US Open play today against Jarmila Gajdosova, said she wouldn't play mixed doubles in Queens– where she won at Wimbledon – because she's overworked.

"I would like to concentrate on singles and save energy because I played so much this year," she said. "I'm running out of gas."

"I wanted to play here as well, but it's going to be too much for me," she added.

I asked her if she felt run-down.

"No, not now," she said. "After Wimbledon, I'd been on vacation. Unfortunately, I got sick in San Diego, so I had some more vacation…No, I feel fresh."

She's played 11 matches since Wimbledon, whereas Henin, Sharapova and Ana Ivanovic have a combined average of seven matches since The Championships.

Some vacation.

Welcome to the New York Observer's U.S. Open blog.

For the next 14 days, Spencer Morgan and I will be in and around the Billie Jean King Tennis Center in Flushing gathering stories, game analysis and observations from the tournament.

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Ana Ivanovic, the modest 19-year-old Serbian tennis player, spent this past weekend traveling between the players’ hotel, at the Le Méridien on 57th Street, and the U.S. Open Tennis Center in Queens on a bus that departs once an hour. She is sharing a room with her mom. She’ll be in bed by 10:30, reading The Secret, the best-selling Rhonda Byrne self-help book.

“I want to go to Abercrombie and Fitch,” she said. “I want to get jeans. Their jeans fit me best.”

If she has time, she said, she’ll go to Macy’s too.

Some female tennis stars crave the chance to land high-end endorsement deals, to dress in Prada, to start their own fashion lines. Ana Ivanovic is not one of them. At a time when women’s tennis has been ravaged by indifference, injuries and shameless self-promotion, she may be just the player the Women’s Tennis Association desperately needs. She’s humble, smart, hungry and ridiculously attractive. Oh—and she has perhaps the best forehand in tennis.

Starting Aug. 27, when the three-week U.S. Open kicks off, she’ll be a star.

[Power Serbs: Novak Djokovic, 20, Has Beaten the Best]

On Aug. 19, eight days before the start of the tournament, she strolled into the players’ lounge on the second floor at Arthur Ashe Stadium. She’s got an athletic shape, at 6-foot-1 and 159 pounds. She has almond-shaped brown eyes and a deep brown tan. She wore a pink Adidas T-shirt, and her hair in a ponytail and looked, despite the fact that she had just spent the previous 90 minutes hitting tennis balls, completely fresh.

She arrived accompanied only by her mother, who speaks little English and quickly excused herself from the room.

“I’m sorry for being late,” she said. (She was less than 10 minutes late.) “I was practicing.”

Ivanovic talks in long, unpunctuated sentences full of false starts (“I think, you know, so, yeah …”) but her English, which she learned nine years ago, is fantastically—refreshingly—expressive in a way that the language of the hyper-media-trained players from America and Western Europe rarely is.

She discussed her game, where in the last year she’s made a steady climb from 16th to No. 4 in the world, the youngest player in the top 10.

“For quite a long time I was around 20th, and I obviously wanted to make this step and break in the top 10,” she said. “I just needed more confidence and more consistency in my game so I would win against top players more often.”

She’s done exactly that. This year, she’s 5-0 against Maria Sharapova and Jelena Jankovic, the No. 2 and No. 3 players in the world, respectively. And she landed in the French Open final and the Wimbledon semifinals, her best-ever finishes in Grand Slams.

When it comes to tennis fundamentals, Ivanovic’s most powerful strength is her forehand. She begins the stroke with her arm turned at a high-arching angle that she whips down to smash through the ball in a style reminiscent of Steffi Graf. She learned it when she was 11.

“Since I was young they always told me I had a powerful forehand,” she said. “Really, growing up I realized that’s my biggest weapon, so I want to use it as much as I can.”

She’s also dramatically improved her movement on the court—helping her to move up 12 spots in the world tennis rankings in the past year—and she’s working on an increasingly powerful serve. Next Page >