Dates: August 27 - September 8, 2012
Venue: Flushing Meadows, USA
Tier: Grand Slam
Prize Money: $11,517,008
Surface: Hard/Outdoors
Tournament Director: David Brewer

Official Website: www.usopen.org

2011 Performance: 1st round. Lost to Pauline Parmentier 6-2 6-3

Singles:
1R: [17] Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (RUS) bt Daniela Hantuchova 6-4 7-6(1)

Doubles:
1R: [9] Raquel Kops-Jones/Abigail Spears bt Daniela Hantuchova/Dominika Cibulkova 4-6 6-1 6-2

Mixed Doubles:
1R: [8] Klaudia Jans-Ignacik/Mariusz Fyrstenberg bt Daniela Hantuchova/Robert Lindstedt 6-7(6) 6-3 10-8

Nasty draw but I guess could have been worse. Any win here is a success.

1r Pavyluchenkova
2r Mlendovic or Erakovic
3r Bartoli or petkovic
4r Kvitova

I actually think Daniela has a good shot at Nastya. Theres no way pavys the same player as she was in 2010. If Daniela gets a good start to the match and plays with confidence I can see Daniela winning. Of course will be tough but sometimes being unseeded can help one play with a little more freedom. The pressure will be more on pavy's shoulders. Daniela deserves a good win in this UsOPen series so heres hoping it happens now.

My first thought was oh no, not Anastasia Alphabet (I do not even try to spell that name). All she does is conjure up bad memories. Then I remembered that Dani's best win during this train wreck period was 1st round Olympics Li Na. Then I read Chungwit stating that Anastasia had withdrawn from New Haven. Hmmm, who did that last year and went down in the 1st round? Reverse omen, anyone?

Top half(Daniela's) will play on Monday.

From the deepest recesses of the mind of a Daniela Maniac with a lot of time on his hands as his wife slowly recovers:
I am fascinated with the early days of television. Recently I found out that a few years ago, the oldest surviving recording of an actual over the air TV broadcast was found and restored. It dates back to 1933. It's a BBC production of what is believed to be the first variety show ever. The BBC was doing one or two programs a night on a regular basis in 1933, and someone decided to use a primitive recording device and tape this show. Supposedly, 6 minutes of what was a 45 minute broadcast survives, and that 6 minutes captured a dance act popular in London at the time which called itself the Paramount Astoria Girls. They did a Rockettes style kick line. If you Google Earliest TV Broadcast or Paramount Astoria Girls, there is a site that for some reason plays 4 seconds of the clip over and over, and it is quite small. But, if you are totally devoid of something to do, go find this clip. Then, go to Daniela's FB page where her featured photo is. If you see a Paramount Astoria Girl reincarnated, you are seeing the same thing as me!
I present this to you not just to display exactly how many screws are loose in my head, but in the hopes that sometime tomorrow, we will all want to do a Daniela Dance, celebrating a nice victory in New York!

Good luck Daniela in the 1st round. I dont expect anything... cheers!

We'll see how Daniela does today. The first set is going to be crucial as she's only come back to win after losing the first set just once since Birmingham and most of her defeats have been in straight sets although they've generally been close. Pavlyuchenkova is running into form and she'll be confident after her run in Cincinnati plus there's her record against Daniela.
Daniela's got nothing to lose, she doesn't have any points to defend so anything she does here is a bonus. It may be too late for the US Open but one small cause for optimism is that at least Daniela's current form is under a mediocre coach so there's hope for improvement with a better coach, her form would be a lot more of a worry if she had a good coach. This is going to be a difficult match so we'll see what happens.