Maybe it all was a little too much, a little too soon for Melanie Oudin.
Oudin, 17, from Marietta, Ga., kept erasing big deficits and upsetting older, taller, higher-ranked players at the U.S. Open, generating more and more interest in her magical ride.
Her gutsy play, aw-shucks approach and those pink-and-yellow sneakers with "BELIEVE" on the heels carried Oudin all the way to the quarterfinals. That's where her surprising story ended last night with a 6-2, 6-2 loss to No. 9-seeded Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark.
"It was a lot," Oudin said. "These past two weeks have been really different for me. I've gone from being just a normal, like, tennis player to almost everyone in the United States knowing who I am now.
"I don't think that affected my tennis game tonight at all."
Perhaps. Still, facing Wozniacki in the sport's largest arena, playing under the bright lights in the big city, Oudin showed signs of shakiness at the start, dropping 14 of the first 18 points. Even Oudin couldn't recover from that.
"This has been a great experience for me. I had a great run here," Oudin told the crowd during an on-court interview right after the match, an honor usually reserved for the winner. "I hope to come back next year and do even better."
It'll be hard to top her 2009 U.S. Open.
With impressive court coverage and solid groundstrokes, Oudin, 5-6, knocked off four more established players -- including Maria Sharapova, a three-time major champion, and Elena Dementieva, the Beijing Olympics gold medalist-- to become the youngest quarterfinalist at Flushing Meadows since Serena Williams in 1999.
Wozniacki will play her first Grand Slam semifinal against another 19-year-old, Yanina Wickmayer of Belgium. The 50th-ranked Wickmayer -- never before past the second round at a major tournament -- beat Kateryna Bondarenko of Ukraine 7-5, 6-4.
The other women's semifinal on Friday features two far more familiar names: defending champion Williams against 2005 champion Kim Clijsters.
Earlier yesterday, No. 4-seeded Novak Djokovic reached the men's semifinals for the third straight year, beating No. 10 Fernando Verdasco 7-6 (2), 1-6, 7-5, 6-2.
Djokovic, the 2008 Australian Open champion, lost to Roger Federer in the 2007 final and the 2008 semifinals at Flushing Meadows. He could meet Federer in the semifinals again this year: After the Oudin-Wozniacki match, Federer faced No. 12 Robin Soderling in the quarterfinals.
While so much of the focus around these parts has been on Oudin, Wickmayer's story is quite intriguing and inspiring.
When she was 9, her mother died of cancer, and Yanina set out to find a fresh start, researching tennis academies on the Internet before finding one in Florida. Her father closed his pool-construction company in Belgium, and relatives supported them financially for 2½ years.
"He just gave everything up for me," Yanina said.
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