As the phrase that we coined says... we are "on the road to the Open", so an update going into the Open. First, going into it... Andy Murray makes the biggest news. He gets to the 2nd round of the Masters Cincy... giving Marat Safin a hard time in that 2nd round match.

For the open itself... the Wild Cards went to a few of the Binghamton participants, just as expected. Brian Baker, Bobby Reynolds, Rajeev Ram and Scoville Jenkins were recipients. Surprisingly, Andy Murray was not. Apparently, there was some discussion about it, but even McEnroe was surprised he didn't get a wild card. That was tough for Andy, who could have used the rest coming off a shoulder injury in Cincy. So he had to play 3 matches in 3 days for qualifying... with a weakened serve. Done. Will be very tough for him to go for long with best of 5 sets, and the question becomes... is this an injury where it may not be wise to keep playing on it? Not the ideal circumstances for Andy at this point.

In all, 22 players that were in Binghamton, also were in the Open qualifying... good advertising for Binghamton. Although Murray and Bogomolov, Jr. were the only ones to get through... there were many names we have seen here in the past. Okun, our champ last year, made it through; Luczak and Elseneer as well.

In the Main draw, Reynolds faces #2 Nadal... Jenkins faces a qualifier... and Baker faced Gaston Gaudio... at the time of this writing on opening Monday, Baker defeated Gaudio in straight sets and Reynolds is on TV against Nadal. Baker with a huge surprising win. He didn't really look ready for a big win in facing Murray here, but there you have it a couple of weeks later... with the growth on his face! We'll be cheering him on in his next match... bagel him Baker!! Reynolds on the biggest stage of tennis TV just 2 weeks after being in our living room.

As far as the rest of the draw and guys that have been here... worth noting some of the recent year participants... as we knew recent years have had alot of potential talent for the next level. The Binghamton '03 crew includes Karlovic, Elseneer, Serra, Muller, and Mello who all are in the main draw. The '04 crew includes Tursunov, Okun, Kim, and Tipsarevic.

Who has a good draw? Baker, Kim, and Murray look like their road isn't as bad as it could be.