With John Isner and Jack Sock eliminated, Tim Smyczek is last American man left in U.S. Open

It is pronounced SMEE-check. Tim Smyczek. And he is the only American man remaining in the U.S. Open singles. (Unless one counts Tommy Haas, the 35-year-old who holds dual U.S.-German citizenship but continues to represent his native Germany in tennis.)

Smyczek, a 25-year-old journeyman ranked 109th in the world, didn't play Saturday; he already is through to the third round and will engage Spaniard Marcel Granollers late Sunday on the Grandstand court.

And he now is the headline Yank in the men's draw after Saturday's last hurrahs by countrymen John Isner and Jack Sock.

Isner, the 6-10 Carolinian seeded 13th, was cut down to size by Germany's Philipp Kohlschreib- er, 4-6, 6-3, 5-7, 6-7 (5). The unseeded Sock, a 20-year-old Nebraskan, lost to wily veteran Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia, seeded 21st, 3-6, 7-6 (1), 6-1, 6-2.

After Thursday night's international brotherhood scene, when Isner was discombobulated by Open fans siding with Gael Monfils in the Frenchman's showy comeback attempt, Louis Armstrong Stadium again was full -- this time solidly in Isner's corner.

"I was enjoying the atmosphere," Isner said. "It's fun to play in front of a packed house like that." But he scolded himself for wasting energy "getting myself fired up" in the high humidity and slumped into the fourth-set tiebreaker exhausted.

"It was stupid on my part. I let him off the hook there at the end of the fourth set," he said, expecting to serve out a 6-5 lead with the kind of heat that produced 26 aces and won points on 84 percent of his first serves.

Instead, he missed all five of his first serves in the game, double-faulted once and slumped into the tiebreaker exhausted. "But all that said, he was better than me,'' Isner said. "Simple as that."

Sock, meanwhile, went from full control of his first set and half of the second to feeling that Tipsarevic's "experience kind of showed a little bit. Picked up his game when he needed to and kind of ran away with it."

After an ace to start the second-set tiebreaker, Sock began spraying groundstrokes, failed to return three Tipsarevic serves and wound up with a weak drop shot on set point that brought a crisp forehand winner by Tipsarevic.

"He's been top 10 in the world," Sock said. "You can't get to top 10 without being a good tennis player, so I knew it was going to be a battle. Just hope to do better next time.

"You've got to be patient. I know it's a process. I know I'm not going to be top 10 in one week. It's going to take a lot of work and a lot of good results."

So that leaves Smyczek, who has been playing most of his tennis in what basically is the minor leagues, the USTA Pro Circuit, and drew a wild card into the Open field.

He drew two less-than-frightening opponents, fellow wild card James Duckworth of Australia and No. 73 Russian Alex Bogomolov Jr., who had upset Bulgaria's Grigor Dimitrov. So here he is: the last American man standing.