Tennis: Six plus two equals minus one

He's the son of a rugby player so Juan Martin del Potro knows better than to talk about anything other than his next match.

However, the popular Argentinian - who won Auckland's Heineken Open tournament this year, winning many friends - knows Andy Murray is looming on the horizon if both make it into the US Open quarter-finals next week.

There, if the tournament continues as seeded, No 6 del Potro will meet No 2 Andy Murray. Both players still need to win two more matches for that to happen but they're on track.

Del Potro powered past Jurgen Melzer of Austria 7-6 (6), 6-3, 6-3, while Murray beat Paul Capdeville of Chile in four sets yesterday.

Murray is responsible for two of del Potro's biggest disappointments. The Briton ended del Potro's 23-match winning streak in the Argentine's first Grand Slam quarter-final here a year ago, then snapped del Potro's 10-match winning streak just before the Open in the Rogers Cup final in Montreal.

In his latest winning run, the youngest player in the top 20 beat Rafael Nadal, Andy Roddick (twice), Lleyton Hewitt and Fernando Gonzalez. While del Potro is one of the world's best players, he's not one of the best hardcourt players yet.

"If I want to be a good player in the future, I have to beat Murray, Federer and Djokovic on this surface," the 20-year-old said. "I'm not yet at their level."

Not yet.

This son of a rugby player and teacher, who grew up preferring concrete over clay on the pampas, has won four of his six ATP titles on hard courts, including two this year in Auckland and Washington. Unlike most Argentines, who favour the French Open, del Potro prefers the US Open.

"I like the surface, I like the city, I like the crowd, I like everything here," he said. "I have a lot of respect for this tournament. I've always dreamed of it."

He rallied from 3-1 down in the tiebreaker against the unseeded Melzer and won the set in 65 minutes - then cruised through the last two against the player who finished Marat Safin's Grand Slam career in the first round.

Next up for del Potro will be another Austrian, Daniel Koellerer.

Meanwhile, just five minutes into his appearance yesterday, Andy Murray's royal blue polo shirt had already turned a couple of shades darker. Murray was coated in sweat.

On a warm afternoon in New York City, he later lost the second set of his second-round match with Capdeville, the first set that any of the men's world's top 10 had dropped all tournament. Murray's four-set defeat of the South American was not without its difficulties.

And it could have been much worse, as, during that second set, he felt so lousy that he thought he was about to be sick on the blue cement. This was not nearly as straightforward as everyone at Flushing Meadows had imagined it was going to be.

Still, Murray then felt a little better, he gathered himself and he picked up his level. After Capdeville levelled the match, Murray's response was to immediately force-feed his opponent a 'bagel' 6-0 set, and then to win the fourth set for a 6-2, 3-6, 6-0, 6-2 victory, which took him through to play Spain's Ivan Navarro or Taylor Dent, an American wild card.

Even though Murray won the opening set with a couple of service breaks, the ball wasn't always coming off the middle of his strings; he was missing shots that he would usually have made easily. And his tennis was scratchier in the second set.

Capdeville, the world No 87, was playing tennis worthy of a higher ranking. For those New Yorkers who don't follow the tennis tour closely, it wouldn't have been immediately obvious which of the players was the second seed at a slam for the first time, and which one had never gone beyond the second round at any of the majors.

"Basically, I played three good sets and one bad one. In the second set, I had a bit of a down physically. I wasn't exhausted. Maybe I didn't eat enough or I ate too soon before the match, because I felt I was going to be sick," said Murray, who vomited on court during his second-round match against Romania's Andrei Pavel at the 2005 US Open after taking on too much energy drink.

Murray, one of the fittest players on the tour, was happier with his performance in the final two sets: "I backed off the baseline, went bigger on my first serve, and got a lot more free points."

- AGENCIES