Florencia Labat vs. Francesca Lubiani

Play finally got underway on the side courts around 5 pm on Thursday -- six hours later than scheduled, due to a numbing rash of intermittent showers. Florencia squared off against fellow lefty Francesca Lubiani. Flo came out in a surprising black shirt; odd because her on-court wardbrobe almost always consists of whites mixed in with light blue, pink, or green pastels. I suppose this choice did match the weather on a very dark day at the US Open.

It was a particularly dark day for Lubiani. According to the official WTA Tour media guide, her favorite surface is hard court, but you wouldn't know it from watching the first five games of this match. Labat dropped only one point in each of the first two games. Lubiani battled back to a 15-40 edge in Game 3, but missed both break opportunities with unforced errors. A third miss ended Labat's hold for 3-0. The fourth game also ended on consecutive errant shots from Lubiani, who hits with two hands from both sides but was finding little success with either one on this day. Florencia then held at love, taking a 5-0 lead with an ace. After just 19 minutes, she was one game away from capturing the first set.

A seemingly disoriented Lubiani made a truly ridiculous forehand error to open the sixth game, but she won the next four points to get on the board at 5-1. Lubiani even had another look at a possible service break up 30-40, but Labat dismissed that with a service winner and closed out the set 6 games to 1. It was a display of great defensive tennis from Florencia, getting back all of Lubiani's accurate shots to keep points alive long enough for the 20-year-old Italian to lose them on errors. More of the same followed early in the second, Labat breaking and holding for a 2-0 lead.

Just winning a game was a challenge for Lubiani, who needed three game points to finally hold for 2-1. Labat followed with an easy service game for 3-1. Lubiani trailed 0-40 in the fifth game, battled back with a nice string of three straight winners, then made two more errors to be broken for 4-1. Three Lubiani errors in a row ended the sixth game. Trailing 5-1 and 15-40, Lubiani finally escaped her nightmare by serving a double fault. You'd almost swear these two knew I had a train to catch. Florencia's 6-1, 6-1 win ended in just 54 minutes.