MELANIE OUDIN

When Melanie Oudin wakes up each morning these days, sharing a king-sized hotel bed with her mother, she's basically your average teen visiting the big city.

Then the 17-year-old from Marietta, Ga., gets out on court at the U.S. Open in those pink-and-yellow sneakers with the word "BELIEVE" stamped near the heel, and there is nothing ordinary at all about her.

No higher-ranked or more-accomplished opponent is too intimidating. No deficit is too daunting.

Yes, the comeback kid did it again Monday.

Melanie Oudin rallied her way into the U.S. Open quarterfinals after losing the first set 1-6.

Five points from a straight-set loss, Oudin kept plugging away with her perpetual-motion defense and pick-her-spots offense for a 1-6, 7-6 (2), 6-3 victory over 13th-seeded Nadia Petrova to reach the U.S. Open quarterfinals.

"It's kind of hard to explain how I've done it," Oudin said. "It's, like, now I know that I do belong here. This is what I want to do, and I can compete with these girls, no matter who I'm playing. I have a chance against anyone."

Can't argue with that. The upset of Petrova follows comebacks from a set down against three-time major champion Maria Sharapova in the third round and No. 4 Elena Dementieva -- a two-time Grand Slam finalist and Beijing Olympics gold medalist -- in the second.

"I don't actually mean to lose the first set," explained a smiling Oudin, 17-4 this season in three-setters. "I sometimes just start off slowly, I guess. Maybe I'm a little nervous."

She is the story of the tournament so far, already drawing comparisons to Tracy Austin (a U.S. Open champion at 16) and Chris Evert (a semifinalist at 17).

This is all so new in so many ways for Oudin, whose twin sister Katherine was bawling in the stands at match's end.

A year ago, Oudin -- it's pronounced "oo-DAN" -- was ranked 221st and lost in the first round at the U.S. Open. She had never won a Grand Slam match until June, when she knocked off former No. 1 Jelena Jankovic en route to Wimbledon's fourth round -- after losing the first set, naturally.

How her life is about to change. It’s starting to change already, actually.

After beating Petrova, Oudin huddled with her coach, Brian de Villiers, trying to figure out how to squeeze in various media obligations with necessary tasks such as eating something and getting treatment for her heavily wrapped left thigh.

Endorsement offers are coming in. Now recognized by strangers, Oudin needs security guards to help her navigate the crowds on her way to the Open's practice courts.

Walking through the lobby of her New York hotel is an adventure. There even was a bit of a skirmish among paparazzi when she was in Times Square the other day.

"That was her first realization that she's big-time, that it is going to be scary sometimes," Katherine said. "I'm surprised that she's held it together as well as she has."

On the court, the situation seemed bleak when Petrova, already up a set, was serving at 4-3, 40-15 in the second. One more point, and Petrova would be a game from the win. But Petrova netted a forehand for 40-30, and on the next point, Oudin blocked back a 112 mph serve and then ended an 10-stroke exchange by smacking a forehand down the line.

"Unbelievable winner," said Petrova, who would never again be that close to victory.

"Winning that game kind of gave her a second breath," Petrova said. "She realized, 'OK, I'm back in the game.' And probably after winning previous matches pretty much in the same way, she thought, 'You know, I can do it again.'"
Precisely right.

Forced to hit extra shots because of the 5-foot-6 Oudin's ability to track down balls and sling them back, Petrova began to make more and more mistakes. During one key stretch early in the third set, Oudin won 11 of 13 points -- and 10 were thanks to miscues by Petrova.

"She's on a roll. And she has nothing to lose," said Petrova, the fourth Russian in a row Oudin has beaten. "She goes, enjoys it, crowd is behind her. She's just having a blast out there."

Sure is.

"This," Oudin said, "is what I've wanted forever."
Not that forever is all that long in her case. She is, after all, "just 17."

Melanie and Katherine began hitting tennis balls out of a bucket with their grandmother at age 7 and then began working with de Villiers at age 9. At about 12, though, Melanie decided she wanted to be home-schooled, so she could focus squarely on tennis. Katherine, meanwhile, plays in national junior tournaments but has other interests and is now a senior in high school.

As little kids, the sisters would play matches on a makeshift court, piling up jackets in their home's cul de sac to serve as a net until Mom or Dad said it was too dark to be outside.

They never pretended, though, that they were at Flushing Meadows or the All England Club. Those places seemed too far away at the time.

"It's not like we were saying, 'Oh, we're going to be there one day,'" Katherine said. "But Melanie's just always believed in herself. It's amazing."

NADAL

Camp Nadal is a fairly sophisticated operation. A Majorcan trainer, Juan Forcades, oversees Nadal's conditioning, physical therapist Rafael Maymo spends much of his day taking notes on when and what Nadal eats; when he goes to sleep and when he wakes; how much time he spends hitting forehands, backhands and volleys. Toni, meanwhile, has harped on his nephew's weaknesses so effectively that even in the earliest rounds of last year's French Open, Rafa was scared of losing. Toni reassured him -- "You're Number 1 on clay!" -- but it didn't matter. "He never relaxes," Toni says. "He's so afraid for every match."

These days it's fashionable to say that Nadal has climbed inside Federer's head. But he needed a ladder to get there. The first rung: consistently staking out an offensive position, or, as Nadal puts it, "always trying to go more inside the court. That gives me more control of the point, no? Before I was maybe one meter behind the baseline, two meters behind." The second rung: a better serve. In his early years on tour Nadal won most of his points with preposterous saves and sterling shotmaking; his serve was strictly a point starter, a predictable slice on which bold returners feasted. After Roddick beat him in straight sets at that year's U.S. Open, the American star walked off the court thinking, he's not going to crack the top five if that serve doesn't improve.

It did. Nadal's serves, which were then clocked at an average speed of 99 mph, are now traveling in the upper 120s on the radar gun. But it wasn't just a matter of hitting the ball harder. In fact, Toni says, one reason Federer had the upper hand in 2007 was that he pushed Rafa to serve with too much velocity, and the speed of Federer's returns threw off Nadal's timing. "So we had to learn other things," Toni says. According to Roddick, Nadal now hits to both sides of the service box on his first and second deliveries. "He can kick it, he can slice it," Roddick says. "You don't really know what's coming."