Aces & faults

ACE

Russian Mikhail Youzhny's military-style salute to the crowd after he wins a match. He prefers it to players who "kiss their hands and say thanks, put racket up and say thanks."

ACE

Asked if he practices the move, he said, "After I win matches."

FAULT

Hurricane Earl missed Flushing Meadows, but ever since the storm passed by, the Open has been bedeviled by ill winds: gales, gusts, blasts, squalls, zephyrs, chinooks.

Numbers

2 Total number of Frenchmen who have won the U.S. title. (Rene Lacoste in 1926 and '27, Henri Cochet in '28.) Gael Monfils, a straight-sets loser to Novak Djokovic Wednesday, won't be joining the pair this year.

4 The number of times Rafael Nadal has finished an Open match past midnight in the last four years. Yesterday's 1:16 a.m. conclusion of his victory over Feliciano Lopez was his third latest; in 2008, he finished a quarterfinal victory over Mardy Fish at 2:11 a.m.

10:51 p.m. Tuesday. The moment when Spain's Fernando Verdasco produced the shot of the tournament on match point in a fifth-set tiebreaker against fellow Spaniard David Ferrer, running down a drop shot and somehow sending a backhand winner down the line.

Furthermore

The wheelchair competition started Wednesday, with Esther Vergeer of the Netherlands the obvious favorite to win a fourth consecutive U.S. Open title. Vergeer, 29, was paralyzed as the result of surgery for a spinal defect and brain hemorrhage in 1990 but since has established herself as one of the world's most accomplished athletes, with three Paralympic and 10 world titles.