KEY POINTS:
As Sam Querrey reeled off another of his big forehands to win a point, a fan borrowed the famous line from the movie Casablanca and yelled out: "Play it again, Sam".
Despite the American's best efforts, he couldn't do it often enough yesterday against Juan Martin Del Potro.
The first game of the match summed up his day. His second first serve thundered down at 221km/h. That's quick, athough still 28km/h behind Andy Roddick's world record of 249.4km/h recorded indoors in 2004.
Two points later, however, Querrey shanked a forehand off the frame wide and looked to the heavens for help.
It's how he plays. It is often all or nothing. To coin another phrase, he won't die wondering.
It's probably why he's a hit with the fans and never short of a quip or two.
In a tennis world short of genuine characters, Querrey is one of the few, even though he is all-American in his red, white and blue attire and goofy smile.
In the after-match speeches, he thanked Heineken for the Heineken girls. "Every tournament should have something like that," he said and it wasn't a reference to their efforts to be sunsmart and offer sunscreen.
When asked about a crucial over-rule that went his way on set-point in the first set, he said it was because he had flirted with the line judge earlier in the week and he also said he had sent not one but two 'get well soon' cards to the injured Phillip Kohlschreiber, his first-round opponent at this week's Australian Open.
"I had fun," Querrey said, despite going down in straight sets to Del Potro. "Win or lose, if you go out there and have fun, whatever happens, happens. Your career is pretty short so you to try to make the best of it. I do that by staying relaxed and trying to enjoy myself.
"My favourite match was when I lost to Rafael Nadal at the US Open. It was the most fun I ever had.
"That was on Arthur Ashe Stadium for the first time, it was sold out and a lot of my friends flew in for the match. The whole atmosphere was good."
Querrey, though, thinks the atmosphere could be even better if tournaments relax rules about crowd behaviour.
"I think in tennis you should be able to talk whenever," he said. "I don't like the rule that you have to be quiet. I think everyone should be able to talk or yell whenever."
It's not likely to happen any time soon. The Heineken Open played music between a change of ends for the first time this year and is renowned for its corporate boxes courtside.
Tournament director Richard Palmer said, however, that it would ruin the integrity of the game if members of the crowd could yell out things like "fault".
