Gerry Marzorati and Michael Kimmelman cover the nooks and crannies of the Open.  Gerry Marzorati: Morning, Michael. I’m a little groggy this morning, having stayed to the end last night, which was early this morning. I was with a friend from work, and she’d come to see Rafa — like all the women seated around us, actually. There was a moment when he took off his shirt and toweled himself and — O.K., it wasn’t exactly Las Vegas Bachelorette Party…  There were two terrific tennis matches played at the Open, neither involving Rafael Nadal, who beat Feliciano Lopez in straight sets. (Nadal, to me, is playing like a lock to reach his first Open final.) One, on Ashe, was a lengthy carryover from the day session: Stanislaw Wawrinka, in the second-longest match of the Open so far (4:28) and looking at times like the new, Annacone version of that other Swiss player on the men’s side — meaning that he came to the net a lot in the fifth set and shortened points successfully — defeated Sam Querrey, leaving no American men standing. The other match, on Armstrong, saw Fernando Verdasco best David Ferrer in a five-set thriller in which Verdasco dropped the first two sets and went down 1-4 in the fifth-set tiebreak before hitting a match-point winner that is now on YouTube: a forehand winner, off a Ferrer drop shot valiantly chased down, that actually bent somehow around the net post.  On the other hand, it was a night of simply lousy women’s tennis. Venus Williams beat Francesca Schiavone for a ninth time, 7-6 (5), 6-4, in a match lengthened by Williams’s erratic serving. Then Kim Clijsters beat Sam Stosur, 6-4, 5-7, 6-3, despite losing her serve seven times and making 43 unforced errors. Stosur was broken eight times, and the third set began with six consecutive breaks, during which time a fair number of people decided to grab something to eat before RafaTime.  Which really leads to a question that maybe I shouldn’t be asking: Where is the inspired women’s tennis at the Open? Has there been one consistently well-played match played among the women’s top seeds? What’s going on? Enough about the windy conditions on Ashe: This isn’t Indian Wells! Where’s the Slam-caliber tennis?  Michael Kimmelman: An inspired women’s match so far? Neither of us caught the late Stosur-Dementieva match, which the media mostly ignored but I’ve heard was possibly the greatest match in the earlier rounds.  So I can’t say there hasn’t been an inspired match. I loved the drama and shot-making in the Wickmayer-Schnyder three-setter I caught on the Grandstand. Intense and competitive play, although it did end when Schnyder double-faulted. Come to think of it, so did the Wozniacki-Sharapova match, which for a while also promised to be great, a real slugfest, before Sharapova couldn’t serve, stuck to a losing strategy and netted a million backhands.  Venus has not been in perfect condition lately, but you would hardly expect her early matches to have been inspiring because she’s just so much better than almost all of her competitors. It would be even truer if Serena were around. Presumably the semis and finals will get better.  That said, fans and sportswriters have been grumbling and wondering about the Open so far. I was seated near a women during an earlier Sharapova-Ivanovic match on Ashe who, when it started off well, turned to her male companion and said, “You see, what do you think of women’s tennis now?” But then I noticed she fell silent as Ivanovic fell apart. And I gather that last night, where fans during the women’s matches inside Ashe could hear roars from the men’s match at Armstrong, which officials started showing on the midway Jumbotrons.  Look, the Williams sisters are historic and revolutionary figures for changing how the game is played. There have never been more women around who can whack the fuzz off the ball. And men’s matches can be endless grinds from the baseline full of errors. Women aren’t alone in losing matches on double faults.  But if you talk with women players and women around the game, they’re quite open about the fact that the women’s side has been plagued by troubles lately.  Too many injuries, way too many psychological breakdowns on court, never mind the retirements: I had a long conversation with Mary Joe Fernandez about this, and with some coaches of the women. They speculated on basic differences between men and women, which tends to be a taboo subject, but clearly affects athletes, and they all lamented how injury and expectations have gotten to various of the top women in ways that have unsettled the game. After all, beyond the Williams sisters, who aren’t always around, you’ve got Clijsters and Henin, both of whom retired, then unretired, and now Henin is injured and out again for the year — and beyond them, you’ve got a slew of pretenders who have proved to be fragile (Safina, Ivanovic, Jankovic, the list goes on).  Thatis what makes Wozniacki suddenly such a precious commodity on tour and why officials have so many hopes now pinned to her success. She looked rock solid against Sharapova. She has great ball-striking abilities, moves well, seems to have her head screwed on, and only lacks the usual tools on the women’s side, comfort at the net, and a second serve.  But what women’s tennis really longs for is an equivalent of Nadal-Roger Federer. It has no equivalent to Chris Evert-Martina Navratilova, or Navratilova-Steffi Graf. The Williamses, as sisters, are peculiar rivals on court. Fans don’t know whom to root for. Their matches haven’t always been great. And the Williamses, Clijsters, Henin lack colleagues who can plausibly challenge them during an early round, or at least make those matches competitive.  There’s plenty of speculation around the women’s game these days about the possible negative effects of the equipment, the training, the prize money, the increasing stress on fashion and the pressure to brand oneself. Clijsters has talked to me at length about the distractions young players now have, with Facebook and text messaging. Though she’s a regular on Twitter now, she said that she was a little stunned coming back from retirement and suddenly feeling like a whole new culture had arrived in the locker rooms, whereas she remembered being entirely focused on tennis as a teen.  But this all might be said about the men’s side, in terms of facing the same changes and pressures, and the men’s side is thriving.  So it’s probably none of these things in particular, if it’s anything at all. Maybe it’s just the coincidence of the Williamses’ long-term dominance and entrenched perception. I’ve heard various people argue that what makes women’s tennis exciting, more exciting than the men’s game, is precisely that the players are more human (even while they hit shots that seem superhuman), and that it’s easier to relate to the anxiety they sometimes convey when having to make a second serve facing a break or hit an overheard to save match point.  All I know is that I always dreamed of defending as beautifully and smartly as Clijsters does, and serving as well as Serena and hitting a backhand like Schiavone and volleying like Stosur. The women’s matches at the Open so far haven’t produced much inspired tennis, but we’re still got inspiring players left.  G.M.: Yes, we do have inspired players on the women’s side left. And I, for one, am not ready to lament the women’s game: Sharapova played a lot of great tennis this summer, Serena at Wimbledon was a marvel, and Venus, though patchy last night, still hit a few serves that were something to behold — and, as Peter Bodo writes in his blog this morning, played an American-style aggressive game that would have been nice to see from, say, Mardy Fish in his match against Djokovic on Monday. I think a Wozniacki-Clijsters final could be a great tennis match. And let me throw this out to you and our readers for some later discussion: Is it time for women — these powerful, athletic women — to be playing five-setters at Slams? Could that provide the memorable storylines and enduring rivalries the women’s game does seem to lack just now?  Neither of today’s women’s quarters — No. 7 Vera Zvonareva vs. No. 31 Kaia Kanepi, or Wozniacki vs. unseeded Dominika Cibulkova — excites me, though I would love to be surprised. All eyes, I suspect, will be on the Federer-Soderling match ltonight — mostly because New York doesn’t want Fed derailed on the way to the men’s final. (Soderling is not popular here, except with a half-dozen Swedes who dress in yellow soccer jerseys and chant for ROW-bin in cheers that include unexpected references to ’70s soul hits.) I am going to be in Ashe late this afternoon to watch the man I think could derail Fed, Novak Djokovic. He’s playing good, solid tennis, after struggling a bit early in the tourney, even though some in the blogosphere and Twitterland are smelling an upset at the hands of Gael Monfils. Monfils has been winning fans here with this speedy, flashy play, but this should be the last time we see a man — or a woman, for that matter — on the Ashe stage in plaid.  M.K.: I would love to see a Williams-Wozniacki final. As for five sets, you know the old debate: why not equal play for equal pay? I don’t think the women or tour organizers would go for it, and I don’t know about more memorable story lines, either. But hey, it’s a Slam.
The Open House twosome wonder why the women's matches at this year's Open have been less than inspiring.