Can Melanie Oudin recapture 2009 magic?

Melanie Oudin charmed and electrified the U.S. Open last year with a run to the quarterfinals marked by third-set comebacks, pink and yellow shoes with "Believe" stitched on to them, and shouts of "C'mon" after yet another point-ending shot.

She was just 17, an American from Marietta, Ga., whose chief weapons were guile and determination. She mowed down four straight Russian players, including Maria Sharapova and Elena Dementieva. Suddenly, her round of 16 appearance at Wimbledon didn't look like such a fluke. And despite her quarterfinal loss to Caroline Wozniacki at the Open, Oudin looked to be on the rise, her prospects as beaming as her smile.

"It was great, something I will remember for the rest of my life," said Oudin this week at the Pilot Pen tournament in New Haven, Conn. "But everyone has one Cinderella story and that was mine."

Then the clock struck midnight.

After the breakout in 2009, Oudin hasn't truly broken through in 2010. While her ranking consistently has been in the top 50, allowing direct entry into all the tournaments rather than the qualifying route she had to take most of last season, she has yet to win that first tournament, has not played well in the three previous Grand Slams, has lost 11 times in the first round and has only won as many as three matches in a tournament twice. She's 17-20 in singles play this year.

All the expectations of last season's magic have been difficult to live up to.

"It's definitely tough," Oudin said. "This week last year, I had no expectations. Nobody had any for me. There was nothing. No one knew who I really was. This year, I am the one to see at all the U.S. tournaments. The fact that Serena is not playing the U.S. Open now and [neither Serena nor Venus] have played any of the U.S. Open Series tournaments, I've been the top American in the draw. I've had to play a lot of night matches, then come back the next day and play. I've gotten a lot of attention."

Her coach, Brian de Villiers, knew that the 2010 season would be different for the young woman he has coached since she was 9. "I told her before the start of the year that this would be a tough year," de Villiers said. "The girls know who she is, they know her game. She's no longer a rookie."

Oudin still seems upbeat, bouncy, optimistic. She looks at the Open and Wimbledon last year as anomalies, results that were counterintuitive to her junior career.

"I feel like I belong there, but I kind of took a huge leap way quicker than people normally do," Oudin said. "People go gradually up the rankings but for me it was all the sudden. This year, it wasn't happening as fast for me. In the juniors I was never the one who did well at a really young age. Kind of weird for me to have done so well last year at the Open being so young when I've normally been a later bloomer.

"Last year, if you look at my results, I happened to play my best tennis at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. So everyone is like, you had a great year. The rest of my results were kind of like this year, they've been OK, nothing like great. I think I'm doing fine. I'm still the youngest player in the top [50]."

De Villiers thinks she's doing fine, too. "She's serving a little better now," he said. "She's a little stronger. We're trying to put more spin in her game. She needs more spin because she is not going to hit these girls off the court.''

She isn't the unknown coming into this Open, and there will be more things outside of tennis that she will have to do in New York. That includes getting 10 inches shorn off her hair, the tresses donated to the Locks of Love organization that collects real hair to be made into wigs for disadvantaged children suffering from medical hair loss.

She's also getting new shoes for this Open, and the word "Believe" is being replaced, though she was not revealing in advance what the new word is.

Said Oudin, "You will see that my new word will definitely be helpful."

And if the favorites stumble . . .

Those weekly computer rankings, a sort of tennis periodic table to illustrate recurring trends, hint at another U.S. Open that won’t show much U.S. firepower.

Without the injured Serena Williams, it is likely that a non-American will win the women’s title at Flushing Meadows for the seventh time in the last eight years. No U.S. man has won since 2003. Depth is another foreign strength.

Consider the players behind the obvious favorites in the women’s field:

Jelena Jankovic
25, Serbia, No. 5
Already 11 years on the tour and still dangerous but entirely unpredictable. She got to the French semifinals before losing to Stosur, went out to Zvonareva in Wimbledon’s fourth round and has made four early exits since then.

Samantha Stosur
26, Australia, No. 6
Consecutive victories at this year’s French Open over three players who have been No. 1 — Justine Henin, Serena Williams and Jelena Jankovic — established her bona fides, though her heavy hitting may be compromised a bit by recent arm trouble.

Vera Zvonareva
25, Russia, No. 8
She was this year’s Wimbledon runner-up and a finalist two weeks ago in Montreal, beating third-ranked Kim Clijsters along the way in both tournaments. A deep run at the Open would not be so surprising.

Agnieszka Radwanska
21, Poland, No. 10
She has had a decent summer and was runner-up to two-time major champ Svetlana Kuznetsova early this month in San Diego. Her youth adds to her possibilities.

Few Americans in top 100

After that handful — plus No. 7 Francesca Schiavone, the reigning French champion from Italy; No. 9 Li Na of China, No. 13 Elena Dementieva of Russia and No. 15 Marion Bartoli of France — there is a noticeable chasm in the rankings before the only other Americans in the top 100 not named Williams show up.

Eighteen-year-old Georgian Melanie Oudin, No. 44, made it to Wimbledon’s fourth round and the Open’s quarters last year, but this year has first-round, first-round and second-round exits from the previous three Slams; 21-year-old Californian Vania King, No. 74, has done no better in the majors.
   
— JOHN JEANSONNE