• Thanks largely to wild cards, 18 of the 64 players in the boys' draw were American. By the end of the second round, only one -- Donald Young -- remained. Young, incidentally, lasted until the semis.

• If I'm Serena Williams, I leave New York with ambivalent feelings. It's painfully clear that I'm still not in shape to win seven matches. But I beat the winner of the last big hard-court tournament (Ana Ivanovic) and took a set (a bagel, at that) from the world No. 1. Tells me that if I work a little harder, I'm right back in the mix.

• Anyone know how to say "too much information" in Romanian? Here's Andrei Pavel describing his digestive issues during his first-round match against Agassi: "I had the feeling I was going to explode in my pants, so it was not very nice."

• If my math is right, had Lindsay Davenport beaten Justine Henin-Hardenne to reach the semifinals, she would have eclipsed Steffi Graf as the all-time WTA prize-money winner.

• Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark, the second seed in the girls' draw, was leading her opponent when she received a questionable call. According to the ITF, she "verbally abused" the linesman, who reported the comments to the supervisor and Wozniacki was defaulted. In a truly postmodern moment, she used her blog to give her side of the story.

• It's half an hour after Agassi's last match. He's emotional, his mind is racing, he's talking to the media about the arc of his career. Suddenly he's asked an out-of-left-field question about winning a title 19 years ago in Brazil. Huh? Agassi smiles and responds, "That paid a lot of bills [smiling] ... $90,000 prize check." If you look it up, you find that, sure enough, the prize money was $90,000. Says something about Agassi's power of recall.

• For the dignity of the sport, could someone give Nikolay Davydenko a clothing deal?

• Nice tournament for college tennis. Apart from Becker, the 2004 singles champ, other former NCAA'ers reaching the middle weekend included Blake (Harvard), Wes Moodie (Boise State), Paul Goldstein (Stanford) and Ryan Sweeting (Florida).

• Speaking of Sweeting, the 2005 junior champ goes to the University of Florida, runs into some disciplinary/legal issues (to borrow from David Foster Wallace: you can Google it yourself) and leaves campus. He goes to summer school in hopes of restoring his eligibility and enters the U.S. Open as an amateur. Then he wins a round and goes five sets with Oli Rochus, entitling him to $26,500 --not a penny of which he was allowed to keep.

• This is a verbatim cut-and-paste from last year, but the sentiment is unchanged: "In the interest of full disclosure: I did some work for USA network during the Open. (Thanks to the many of you who wrote in critiquing my wardrobe, my posture, the altitude of my zipper, etc.) But in all objectivity, you wish all the Slams were covered as thoroughly and honestly and as enthusiastically as the U.S. Open."

• More full disclosure: Sports Illustrated partnered with American Express in some of the U.S. Open tie-ins. That said, does any company do cooler sports promotion than Amex? Love Pong. Still love the Venus-playing-Whack-a-Mole commercial. And the "public U.S. Open viewing spaces" in Madison Square Park and Rockefeller Center were fantastic, the next best thing if you were unable to score actual tickets to a match.