Qualifiers bloom/blossom/come out with blazing guns at the Flushing Meadows

“If he plays anybody in the draw like this he could win. Nobody is going to beat him easily. He’s a very tough opponent in the first round. The serve, I could not break it.”

Blanco, ranked 114th, smacked 57 winners past his 20th-ranked Aussie rival to win 7-6 (7/3), 2-6, 6-3, 1-6, 7-6 (7/5) in three hours and two minutes, taking five of the final six points in the deciding tie-breaker. “That probably is my best match. I’m so happy for that,” Blanco said. “That was the most important match of my life.”

Blanco rose to 9-17 this year with his first five-set triumph. Rafter, who lost his serve only once in the match, had won 12 of his past 13 five-setters and was 11-8 in 2000 tie-breakers, but made 68 unforced errors.

“I didn’t give myself a lot of opportunities,” Rafter said. “It was a lot of unforced errors. When the match gets tight I’m pretty solid and make him come up with good shots. Tonight was far too many errors.”

Arthurs zipped his final ace at 134 mph (215.6 km/hr) on match point as Kuerten watched helplessly. The 29-year-old from Adelaide was best known for winning 111 service games in a row over 19 sets last year at Wimbledon, starting with three qualifying matches and ending in the third set of a fourth-round loss to Andre Agassi.

“Now I’ll go home and people will see what I’ve achieved,” Arthurs said. “You walk in somewhere where someone says hello, actually knows who you are after 10 years of grinding.”

Arthurs was a first-round loser in three prior Grand Slam starts this year and had been a second-round loser in his two prior US Open starts. Rafter, the 1997 and 1998 US Open champion, lost here in round one in 1993, 1996 and last year when he retired with shoulder pain in the fifth set against France’s Cedric Pioline, ending an 11-match win streak in five-setters.

“It’s going to be hard to sleep,” Rafter said. “It’s disappointing but I try to be very positive about it. These things happen. It’s not the end of the world. I’m happy with the way I fought. Some days it just doesn’t go your way.”

Blanco, 23, lost his only prior meeting to Rafter, 27, by 6-3, 7-6, 6-3 in the 1997 French Open quarter-finals. “He beat me in my tournament and I beat him here in his,” Blanco said. “I haven’t played a lot of matches and I wanted to play well.”

Rafter led the final tie-breaker 4-2 but netted a backhand, sent forehands wide and long and netted another backhand to give Blanco two match points. Rafter saved the first with a backhand winner but hit a forehand wide to fall. “I wasn’t hitting the ball well,” Rafter said. “I was finding the ball hard to pick up. It was hard to play a game I felt comfortable with. Chip-charging wasn’t working. I was missing the fundementals. My game was off.”

Rafter, now aiming at the Sydney Olympics and December’s Davis Cup final in Spain, said he was not bothered by a nagging shoulder injury but lacked match toughness due to slowed training. “I need matches. They haven’t come,” Rafter said. “It’s just a lot of hard work now to try and get the form back.”

Arthurs, only 10-15 in ATP matches this year, won 63 of 70 first-serve points and denied Kuerten on 8-of-9 break-point chances, seven in the last two sets, using his overpowering serve to keep “Guga” a spectator much of the time. “I knew what I had to do. I have watched Gustavo a lot,” Arthurs said.

Kuerten, who squandered his best-ever Slam seeding, knew quickly he was done. “From the begining of the tie-breaker he played well,” Kuerten said. “At 4-0 it was almost over. I didn’t feel I had a chance to turn it around.”

Arthurs, whose father Derek was an Irish Davis Cup player in the 1960s and mother Angie played in Britain, won his first ATP singles match in Hong Kong in 1996 but injured his left elbow later in 1996 and missed nine months.

Kuerten, who turns 24 on the day of the US Open men’s final, was only he the second number two seed ousted in round one ever at the Open, joining the 1994 exit of Goran Ivanisevic, who made another first-round departure.

Ivanisevic, who turns 29 next month, lost to Slovakia’s Dominik Hrbaty 3-6, 6-0, 6-1, 6-0. The three-time Wimbledon runner-up from Croatia grabbed a 5-1 lead in the first 16 minutes, then lost 20 of 22 games in the next 65 minutes.

Serena Williams opened defencee of her US Open title by ousting Slovenia’s Tina Pisnik 6-3, 6-2 in 59 minutes but said she did not feel at top form. “I was really going for it, too much maybe,” Williams said. “I was feeling a little, not the usual Serena. It showed because it should have been a little quicker. It was 59 minutes. I’m used to 40 and 30s now.”

Reigning Australian Open and Olympic champion Lindsay Davenport took only 44 minutes to ousted Spain’s 29th-ranked Gala Leon Garcia 6-0, 6-1.