NEW YORK (AP)—If Roger Federer is going to reach a seventh consecutive U.S. Open final, he might need to get past the man who ended his Grand Slam semifinal streak.

Five-time U.S. Open champion Federer was given a possible quarterfinal against two-time French Open runner-up Robin Soderling when the draw for this year’s U.S. Open was made Thursday.

The No. 5-seeded Soderling upset Federer in the quarterfinals in Paris this year, stopping Federer’s record run of reaching at least the semifinals at 23 consecutive Grand Slam tournaments.
 
The other men’s matchups in the quarterfinals could be No. 1-seeded Rafael Nadal against No. 8 Fernando Verdasco, two-time major finalist Andy Murray against Wimbledon runner-up Tomas Berdych, and No. 3 Novak Djokovic against No. 6 Nikolay Davydenko or No. 9 Andy Roddick.

The top-seeded woman, 2009 runner-up Caroline Wozniacki, could face 2006 champion Maria Sharapova in the fourth round and 2004 champion Svetlana Kuznetsova in the quarterfinals.

Other possible women’s quarterfinals set up Thursday are defending champion Kim Clijsters against French Open runner-up Sam Stosur, 2000-01 U.S. Open winner Venus Williams against French Open champion Francesca Schiavone, and 2008 U.S. Open finalist Jelena Jankovic against Wimbledon runner-up Vera Zvonareva.

Murray, hoping to become the first British man since 1936 to win a Grand Slam title, could meet No. 20-seeded Sam Querrey of the United States in the fourth round. Another American, Wimbledon marathon man John Isner, is seeded 18th and also is in that quarter of the draw.

In the semifinals, Murray was drawn to meet Nadal, who lost in the last four in New York each of the past two years and is trying to complete a career Grand Slam by winning the U.S. Open for the first time.

Federer was drawn to meet Djokovic or Roddick in the semifinals. Aside from his potential rematch with Soderling, Federer could face another familiar opponent in the third round: 2001 U.S. Open and 2002 Wimbledon champion Lleyton Hewitt. Federer beat Hewitt in the 2004 U.S. Open final, part of a 15-match, head-to-head winning streak for Federer—which ended when Hewitt beat him in the final of a grass-court tournament at Halle, Germany, in June.

Federer lost in the 2009 U.S. Open final to Juan Martin del Potro, who—like No. 1-ranked Serena Williams—previously withdrew from this year’s tournament, having not recovered fully from surgery.

Williams’ older sister, Venus, who is seeded No. 3, could face an intriguing matchup in the third round against No. 32-seeded Tsvetana Pironkova of Bulgaria. Pironkova has won two of her previous three matches against Venus Williams, including a straight-sets upset in the Wimbledon quarterfinals on June 29.

That was the last match Williams played on tour; she sprained her left kneecap in early August, forcing her to withdraw from hard-court tournaments in Cincinnati and Montreal.

The U.S. Open begins Monday, and Williams will have gone more than two months without a match by the time she meets her first-round opponent, Roberta Vinci of Italy, who is 1-7 for her career at Flushing Meadows.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP)—U.S. Open top seed Caroline Wozniacki got a little help from the entire Yale football team Wednesday as she cruised to a 6-4, 6-1 win over Dominika Cibulkova at the Pilot Pen tournament.

Wozniacki, who won in Montreal on Monday and is this tournament’s two-time defending champion, has a special relationship with the team. She took time last year to visit a Yale practice and talked to the players about mental toughness. They responded this year by appearing en masse, in their jerseys at her opening match.

“They are really nice guys, and that they all came and supported me today was just fun,” she said. “We should make this a tradition.”
 
Wozniacki got off to a rough start, and was down 4-3 in the first set. In between games, she got some treatment for a stiff back and responded by giving up just two points the rest of the set.

“I was telling myself, ‘I want to play, move your feet, come on let’s go,”’ Wozniacki said. “We don’t want to play three sets of course, I want to win in two.”

It didn’t hurt, she said, to have about 80 good looking guys yelling for her.

“We’ve kind of adopted her as our professional women’s tennis player, and hopefully we’re her American college football team,” Yale coach Tom Williams said.

Wozniacki plays Italian Flavia Pennetta in the quarterfinals. Pennetta advanced with a 6-3, 6-2 win over Olga Govortsova of Bellarus. If Wozniacki wins Thursday, she will clinch the U.S. Open Series championship.

In other matches, Russian Elena Dementieva moved into the quarterfinals with a 7-6 (4), 6-7 (5), 6-4 win over Kateryna Bondarenko of Ukraine.

Dementieva, who is ranked No. 13 in the world, has dropped out of the top 10 for the first time since 2008. She said she spent four weeks in bed after tearing her left calf muscle in June during the French Open, and it has taken her some time to feel comfortable on the U.S. hard courts.

“I expected to play summer matches to get my confidence back, and just to feel the surface” she said. “Unfortunately, I was not able to do so.”

She had plenty of time on the surface Wednesday, playing for just over three hours in a back-and-forth contest that featured 13 service breaks.

She will face Marion Bartoli next. Bartoli beat Anastasia Rodionova 6-3, 6-1 on Wednesday.

Nadia Petrova, playing her second straight match on the grandstand court, beat Bethanie Mattek-Sands in straight sets, 6-3, 6-3. She will face Australian Samantha Stosur in the quarterfinals.

“I’m getting to that stage when I get really confident and feeling ready for the Open,” Petrova said.

Russian Dinara Safina needed two tiebreakers to get by Daniela Hantuchova 7-6 (4), 7-6 (2).

Safina was happy with her serving, which she said has been slow to come back since she ruptured a muscle and suffered a stress fracture in her back in January. She won 73 percent of her first-serve points, and 81 percent in the second set.

“Before it was one of my weapons, but because of my injury I was suffering a little bit,” she said. “Slowly I’m getting my motion back and am starting to use it much more.”

In the men’s draw, top seed Marcos Baghdatis needed three sets to beat Juan Ignacio Chela and earn a quarterfinal berth.

Chela took the first set 6-1, before Baghdatis came back to win the next two 6-3, 6-2.

Baghdatis said he didn’t get much sleep Tuesday night and had a bad morning, getting up earlier than he needed to, because he thought he had an earlier match.

“I was a bit tired, so I started the match like I started my day, basically,” he said. “But then, I found a solution to win. I fought the match. I stopped crying.”

James Blake, who grew up in nearby Fairfield, lost his second-round match in straight sets to Russian Alexandr Dolgopolov 6-4, 6-2.

Blake had won the first game on Tuesday night, before rain forced play to be suspended. When the players got back on the court Wednesday afternoon, Dolgopolov won the first five games, and was never really threatened.

Blake, now 30, has dropped to 111 in the world rankings, but said he still feels he has some good tennis left in him.

“I’ve gotten almost everything in my life through working as hard as I can and putting my head down and hoping for the best, and that’s what I’ve got to do now,” he said. “It’s tougher and tougher as the results aren’t coming.”

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut (AP)—Elena Dementieva of Russia moved into the quarterfinals of the Pilot Pen tennis tournament with 7-6 (4), 6-7 (5), 6-4 win over Kateryna Bondarenko.

Dementieva says she rested for four weeks after tearing a left calf muscle during the French Open and is excited about getting in more matches before next week’s U.S. Open.

She will face Marion Bartoli, who defeated Anastasia Rodionova 6-3, 6-1 on Wednesday. Flavia Pennetta also advanced to the quarterfinals with a 6-3, 6-2 win over Olga Govortsova of Belarus.

Alexandr Dolgopolov of Russia beat James Blake 6-4, 6-2.

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut (AP)—Australia’s Samantha Stosur needed three sets and a tiebreaker to beat Sara Errani of Italy 6-1, 3-6, 7-6 (4) at the Pilot Pen tennis tournament.

The second-seeded woman cruised through the first set, but was broken twice in the second.

Errani was serving for the match, up 5-4 and 40-15 in the third, before Stosur rallied, saving four match points.

“I just tried to hang in there and eventually got through that game, and once I won that then I knew that I was in a good spot,” Stosur said.
 
Stosur, who didn’t play in Cincinnati or Montreal because of an injury to her right arm, said she was a little nervous about how it would hold up under match conditions.

“I actually hadn’t hit more than about 30 serves in any practice session yet, so it was a good test for it tonight, and it was all good,” she said.

In the men’s draw, top-seeded Marcos Baghdatis fought through strong winds and a half hour of rain delays for a 6-2, 6-4 win over Igor Andreev in his opening match.

The Cypriot, who made it to the semifinals last week in Cincinnati and the finals earlier this month in Washington said he’s playing some of his best tennis heading into next week’s U.S. Open.

“It’s been a good summer for me, but I came to play here and I came to win the tournament,” he said.

“I’m not looking to win a Grand Slam or play well in a Grand Slam,” he added. “I’m looking to improve my tennis.”

Baghdatis broke Andreev in the first game of each set and kept the pressure on, but said the weather made it hard to get into a rhythm.

“The balls are heavy with the wind, with the rain a bit, you don’t feel really good to grip the racket,” he said. “I cannot say I’m feeling perfect, but I’m happy I won. I’m happy I found a solution so I can get another match tomorrow.”

In the women’s draw, Russian Maria Kirilenko beat last year’s finalist Elena Vesnina 6-1, 3-6, 6-1 in the first round, a year after making it to the finals.

Despite her runner-up status, Vesnina had to go through qualifying to get into the tournament, arriving from Montreal on Saturday just 2 hours before her first match. She played and won three matches over the weekend to earn her way into this year’s main draw.

Kirilenko said she switched rackets after losing her feel for the ball in the second set.

“I started to make a lot of double faults, and my serve didn’t work at all,” she said. “In the third set, my serve started to feel better.”

On the grandstand court, Marion Bartoli of France needed three sets to get by Alona Bondarenko of Ukraine 6-7 (4), 7-6 (2), 6-3. Bartoli said wind gusts didn’t allow her to be as aggressive as she would have liked.

“I was aiming in the middle and my ball was ending up 10 centimeters from the baseline or from the right or left line,” she said.

Australia’s Samantha Stosur played Italy’s Sara Errani in the final women’s match Tuesday night.

In the men’s draw, third-seeded Chile’s Fernando Gonzalez, back from a knee injury that has kept him out since the French Open, lost to Radek Stepanek of the Czech Republic 6-2, 6-4 in a second-round match.

Stepanek is playing his fourth tournament after coming back from his own knee problems, and had lost in the first round of the other three.

“After such a long time off, you have to find your game,” he said.

American Donald Young fell in his second-round match to Argentinian Juan Ignacio Chela, 5-7, 6-4 6-0.

James Blake, who grew up in nearby Fairfield was to play in the final match of the night.

Game Point is Busted Racquet’s roundup of facts, figures and links from around the web.

Love — The U.S. Open seeds were announced this week and since they conform to ATP and WTA rankings, there’s no real surprises. Rafael Nadal is the No. 1 seed on the men’s side and Caroline Wozniacki, by virtue of Serena Williams‘ withdrawal, is tops on the women’s. Defending champion Kim Clijsters is seeded second. As Matt Cronin pointed out on Twitter, the last 10 women’s seeds are all from Eastern Europe.

15 — ESPN2 will air the exclusive announcement of the men’s and women’s draws on Thursday at noon ET and we’ll have coverage here at Busted Racquet immediately after.

30 — Just like in my dreams, the Jonas Brothers will be performing this weekend at the 15th annual Arthur Ashe Kid’s Day. Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Andy Roddick, Kim Clijsters, the Bryan Brothers and others will be taking part in skills competitions and exhibitions during the day.

40 — In a media conference call on Tuesday, Venus Williams declared herself ready for the Open and spoke about the dress she’ll debut next week. "It’s very New York," she said. "Just like my dress at the French Open was very French. It’s a little bit louder, a little bit more in your face, it’s — however you want to put it — a little more sexy."

Game — Saved the best for last: Steve Tignor of Tennis Magazine is writing a book about tennis in the late ’70s and early ’80s and Tuesday shared some of the best U.S. Open stories he’s come across while researching the book. Go read it, if only for the tales about Ilie Nastase.

Fernando Gonzalez, out since the French Open with a knee injury, has lost his comeback match in New Haven to Radek Stepanek 6-2, 6-4.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP)—Top-seeded Marcos Baghdatis fought through strong winds and a half hour of rain delays Tuesday for a 6-2, 6-4 win over Igor Andreev in his opening match at the Pilot Pen tennis tournament.

The Cypriot, who made it to the semifinals last week in Cincinnati and the finals earlier this month in Washington said he’s playing some of his best tennis heading into next week’s U.S. Open.

“It’s been a good summer for me, but I came to play here and I came to win the tournament,” he said.

“I’m not looking to win a Grand Slam or play well in a Grand Slam,” he added. “I’m looking to improve my tennis.”

Baghdatis broke Andreev in the first game of each set and kept the pressure on, but said the weather made it hard to get into a rhythm.

“The balls are heavy with the wind, with the rain a bit, you don’t feel really good to grip the racket,” he said. “I cannot say I’m feeling perfect, but I’m happy I won. I’m happy I found a solution so I can get another match tomorrow.”

In the women’s draw, Russian Elena Vesnina lost to countrywoman Maria Kirilenko 6-1, 3-6, 6-1 in the first round, a year after making it to the finals.

Despite her runner-up status, Vesnina had to go through qualifying to get into the tournament, arriving from Montreal on Saturday just 2 hours before her first match. She played and won three matches over the weekend to earn her way into this year’s main draw.

Kirilenko said she switched rackets after losing her feel for the ball in the second set.

“I started to make a lot of double faults, and my serve didn’t work at all,” she said. “In the third set, my serve started to feel better.”

On the grandstand court, Marion Bartoli of France needed three sets to get by Alona Bondarenko 6-7 (4), 7-6 (2), 6-3. Bartoli said wind gusts, which topped 20 mph, didn’t allow her to be as aggressive as she would have liked.

“I was aiming in the middle and my ball was ending up 10 centimeters from the baseline or from the right or left line,” she said.

Samantha Stosur was playing Sara Errani in the final women’s match Tuesday night.

In the men’s draw, third-seeded Fernando Gonzalez, back from a knee injury that has kept him out since the French Open, lost to Radek Stepanek 6-2, 6-4 in a second-round match.

Stepanek is playing his fourth tournament after coming back from his own knee problems, and had lost in the first round of the other three.

“After such a long time off, you have to find your game,” he said.

American Donald Young fell in his second-round match to Argentinian Juan Ignacio Chela, 5-7, 6-4 6-0.

James Blake, who grew up in nearby Fairfield, was to play in the final match of the night.

NEW YORK (AP)—Seeking to complete the career Grand Slam, Rafael Nadal will be the top-seeded man when the U.S. Open starts next week, while Roger Federer will come to Flushing Meadows seeded second.

Nadal, who won the French Open and Wimbledon this year, is seeded first at the U.S. Open for the second time in three years. He has never made it past the semifinals.

The women’s seedings have been delayed one day because of a rainout of Sunday’s final at the Rogers Cup in Montreal. On Monday, world No. 2 Caroline Wozniacki defeated Vera Zvonareva to win that tournament. It appears Wozniacki, who lost to Kim Clijsters in last year’s final, will get the top seed at the U.S. Open because Serena Williams, the world’s top-ranked player, has withdrawn while recovering from surgery to repair cuts on her right foot.

Also missing from New York will be defending men’s champion Juan Martin del Potro, who remains sidelined with a lingering wrist injury. Del Potro defeated Federer in last year’s final, ending his string of five straight U.S. Open titles. Federer, who won the Australian Open this year, is seeking his 17th Grand Slam tournament title.

Del Potro, meanwhile, is only the third U.S. Open men’s champion in the 42-year Open era who won’t be on hand to defend his title.

Seeded third for the men is Novak Djokovic, followed by Andy Murray at No. 4. Robin Soderling, Nikolay Davydenko, Tomas Berdych and Fernando Verdasco round out the top eight.

At No. 9, Andy Roddick is the highest seeded American man. With a trip to the semifinals in Cincinnati last weekend, Roddick jumped back into the world’s top 10. Earlier this month, Roddick fell to No. 12 and it marked the first time since the rankings began in 1973 that no American man was in the top 10.

The draws for the tournament come out Thursday.