Yahoo Sports 
Out of the singles, Vasek Pospisil will try to transfer his renewed confidence into the US Open doubles
NEW YORK – Vasek Pospisil knows ahead of time that there are certain tournaments where his entire collection of Asics shirts is going to end up in a big, soaking-wet pile next to his chair by the end of a match.
Miami is one of them. So is the US Open most years, when the weather is as it was Wednesday. The humidity and his opponent will end up tag-teaming him, two against one.
But Pospisil’s biggest problem Wednesday in his second-round match against South Africa’s Kevin Anderson was his serve. Or rather, the fact that his usually powerful, effective serve was missing in action.
The 26-year-old from Vernon, B.C. felt this was the biggest stumbling block in his 7-6, 6-4, 6-4 loss to Anderson, which ended his US Open in singles and leaves him focused on trying to win the men’s doubles with countryman Daniel Nestor.
When the serve isn’t going to be there, he can usually tell pretty early on. Some days he can even feel it in the warmup, that it’s not going to flow as freely. And on a humid day with the balls fluffing up and feeling heavy, wearing out even more quickly than the type used at the US Open typically does, it’s tough on the shoulder as well.
“I think the difference was his serving and my lack of serving, I would say. I was just not serving the way I should be serving, and the way I can serve. And the way I served in the first round. It was just not there, which was disappointing,” Pospisil said. “Even when I made a first serve it wasn’t really zipping through the court, and he was putting me under pressure on my service games because my serves were sitting up a little bit, and (there were) a lot of second serves.”
Pospisil has been bitterly disappointed after coming off the court quite a few times this year. But on this day, he was more serene. In the end, he pronounced himself satisfied with the level of his play in his two singles matches here and if it weren’t for the fact that he had a poor serving day, he felt he could have been right in there with a top-25 player.
Pospisil has an excellent serve, which sets up the rest of his game. Anderson, though, is a level above. The Canadian puts him up there with the Isners, Karlovics and Raonics on tour as a server. But he handled it fairly well overall, and stayed pretty even with him from the ground.
The numbers bear it out – especially Pospisil’s relative effectiveness on the return. He won one-third of the points against Anderson’s serve. But on his own, his first-serve number was just 50 per cent and he had to put out a lot of fires. Pospisil saved 11 break points against his serve, but Anderson converted four, and that wasn’t enough.
By the third set, the humidity definitely got to Pospisil, affected his stamina. As he began feeling it in his legs, the serve lost even more of its zip.
He knew it, too; gone was the hat. The effort was still there for the most part but the energy level wasn’t and down two sets to none, knowing in his heart the likelihood of winning three straight sets and taking the match was remote given the conditions, he had to be a little resigned.
The two play hand in hand at times. Had he pulled out the first set tiebreak, or even the second set, the adrenaline might have made up for the lack of spring in the legs.
“I think the humidity can be tough because I sweat a lot. It can drain you out pretty quick. It’s one of the things I’ve learned to deal with over the years,” he said. “I think this year in general, it’s been pretty good. But today was a little hard.”
The uptick in his level will Pospisil a boost going into the doubles with Daniel Nestor and even into the rest of the singles season, where he hopes to salvage something out of 2016. They play the American wild card team of Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul Thursday.
At the very least, Pospisil needs to get his singles ranking back into the top 100 again so he doesn’t find himself having to qualify at the Australian Open next January.
“We played quite well the last tournaments, three tournaments, three semis. I think we can play better. I can serve better. And I hope I’ll serve better than I did today,” he said of the doubles. “We’re good doubles players, I have confidence in him. He has confidence in me. Just have to go on court and try to win each point and then we’ll see the result.”
Pospisil hasn’t looked past the three tournaments coming up in China in September and early October because the entry-list cutoffs are high and at this point, he doesn’t even know for sure if he can even get into the qualifying.
But he has resolved to stay at the ATP Tour level rather than drop down to the Challengers and try to grind out some wins.
“I feel like I’m bound to pick my level again and play well and I want to be playing a big event when that happens, rather than go down a level and play Challengers,” he said. “There’s much more to gain. That time is going to come soon so I’m going to try to play as many ATP qualies as I can.”
