Roddick, Isner Highlight Tuesday in Washington; Blake Bounced

The top American seeds take the court Tuesday at the Legg Maston Tennis in Washington in what shapes up to be a pretty good schedule. Among the top names are big-serving Andy Roddick, John Isner and Mardy Fish. Fernando Verdasco is also on the ticket.ADHEREL

Roddick and Isner are on back-to-back starting at 7pm against Zemlja and de Bakker, respectively. I’ll be most interested tin seeing how Roddick fares this week in D.C. where he’s won three times. Plus, I think his draw looks reasonable.

That said, since his Miami title Roddick is just 8-4 on the tour and none of those wins have come over Top 30 players and just two were in straight sets.

And if Andy doesn’t put up some good results these he could be out of the Top 10 by the US Open.

Also today, Gilles Simon, Marin Cilic and Richard Gasquet are in action while the surging Fish could get a real test from Viktor Troicki. I also think de Bakker could pose a threat to Isner.

A few interesting results from yesterday’s first round. David Nalbandian made an excellent return beating Rajeev Ram 6-4, 6-0. Now ranked No. 117, Nalbandian is playing his first ATP event since Monte Carlo and he’ll face Stan Wawrinka tomorrow in a great match.

James Blake’s struggles continued on Monday. The former Top 5 fell in three sets 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 to fellow American Ryan Sweeting . James has just three wins in six events since Indian Wells, though the American has been battling a knee injury.

“I haven’t played a lot of matches this year and I would have loved to have played more matches this week, but it wasn’t to be,” said Blake. “I just wasn’t doing the things I needed to do to win matches. I played tentative on the big points; I needed to step up to take control of the big points. Credit to Ryan for doing that.”

Top seed Tomas Berdych will debut Wednesday against Dmitry Tursunov.

TUESDAY WASHINGTON SCHEDULE

STADIUM start 4:00 pm
[15] M Fish (USA) vs V Troicki (SRB)
Not Before 5:00 PM
[3] [WC] F Verdasco (ESP) vs M Berrer (GER)
Not Before 7:00 PM
[Q] G Zemlja (SLO) vs [2] A Roddick (USA)
T de Bakker (NED) vs [5] J Isner (USA)

GRANDSTAND start 4:00 pm
[1] D Nestor (CAN) / N Zimonjic (SRB) vs T Berdych (CZE) / R Stepanek (CZE)
Not Before 5:00 PM
D Istomin (UZB) vs [4] M Cilic (CRO)
[Q] R Sweeting (USA) vs [14] M Llodra (FRA)
[13] G Simon (FRA) vs [Q] I Kunitsyn (RUS)

COURT 1 start 4:00 pm
[12] J Benneteau (FRA) vs X Malisse (BEL)
Not Before 5:00 PM
[WC] R Gasquet (FRA) vs K Vliegen (BEL)
Y Lu (TPE) vs A Falla (COL)

COURT 2 start 4:00 pm
[Q] B Dabul (ARG) vs M Chiudinelli (SUI)
Not Before 5:00 PM
A Clement (FRA) vs J Tipsarevic (SRB)
[4] J Knowle (AUT) / A Ram (ISR) vs [WC] N Healey (AUS) / L Hewitt (AUS)