Petra Kvitova would have smiled if she knew in 2010 that she’d be opening Ashe as a Slam winner tomorrow. Kvitova opens on Arthur Ashe Stadium and she’s the marquee player on court by virtue of facing Alexandra Dulgheru. The times, they are a changin’. Kvitova’s gone from Armstrong-or-worse to Ashetabulous in one short year, and she’s not even American. Impressive climb, Petra. Don’t forget the charter members of your fan club.
UPDATED: The Kvitova-Dulgheru match has been pushed to Armstrong as the 2nd match after Ryan Harrison (1:30-2:30 start time) to accommodate a revised 1 pm first-use at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Kvitova’s absence from that horrible spaceship of a tennis stadium will only delight the fans that avoid Ashe like the plague in the early rounds.
We’re alright with this information. We predict Petra will win at least a couple of matches on Ashe before this thing is over.
THE PITS
Tomorrow’s big debut match in the new show court, #17, “The Pit”, will feature……..
| Sergiy Stakhovsky(UKR) | vs. | Richard Gasquet(FRA)[13] |
Yawn. More like a first round ATP 250 match. We were hoping for some ‘inaugural hype’ as we are fond of doing up in our region. However, it looks like the play itself will have to make the special memories because the players themselves are as exciting as dust.
At least Christina McHale and Sam Stosur will get to break in the Pit tomorrow when they play opponents there.
THE PICKS
We pick Ryan Harrison, Madison Keys, Vavs Lepchenko, Irina Falconi and Xavier Malisse to pull off mini-upsets tomorrow.
Tennis Atlantic 
Return Serve?