Rafa fans...please replace Djoko with Nadal and tell me with a straight face that you would rather have Davydenko, in form Fish, in form Baggy, Roddick ...etc in his quarter.
Please do that...and make my day.
Also...let's take Fed's quarter for a minute...and move Nadal into that one.
Then ... you would start b1tching about the "huge hitting Tursunov", very experienced/tough Hewitt, big serving/hitting Cilic, and oh GOD OH GOD ... Soderling the m3nace.
As it stands ... you're just disregarding all those players and making a big fuss about "Gabashvili".
Are you people serious ???!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!? Gabashvili ?? Istomin ??? "Extremely dangerous" ???!
REALLY ?!?!
Just face it. You are scared because you know full well that there are PLENTY of players who can beat Nadal @ the US Open...and only 1 or 2 (if that) who can beat Federer...and even those 2 have to be inspired and maybe Fedster be slightly "uninspired" for that to happen.
Now go reflect on that for a minute.
You complain that Nadal fans "*****" about the draw yet the style in which you wrote your posts seems more like *****ing to me. I for one have actually agreed with what you say indirectly so why the bothered tone ?
We are talking about POTENTIAL upsets and Nadal has more bad match-ups in the early rounds(in which upsets are far more likely cause the one causing the upset doesn't have as much pressure as in a SF or F and big guys are usually rustier in the first rounds) relative to his HC level. Even if Nadal isn't the best HC'er out there, there are only a couple of guys that could bother him match-up wise and guess what, a lot of them are on his side of the draw. It is possible for Nadal to have a easy draw at USO, see last year's draw, where he met no big hitters or in-form players until SF and met only slowcourt players until then.
Gabashvili may not be great but he hits hard and is tricky for a first round, istomin nearly beat Nadal on grass, took out wawrinka and schuetler in WB and got eliminated by the finalist Berdych in five sets, Gulbis is dangerous no matter in what section he is, Nalbandian is Nadal's worst matchup along with Murray and DelPo, basically the only round in which Nadal will have it easier will be 4R and that's if he gets lopez, who is hopeless on this surface.
Let's take a look at the switch-a-roo you propose: Tursunov was once a guy with great promise but he hasn't amounted to much and he would pose no trouble to Rafa, Hewitt would be dangerous to Rafa on a good day so I agree here and Cilic, I would agree most times, but he has been absolutely awful since AO, I don't know what happened to him. And Soderling, who would be a threat normally, has been on a downward spiral cause he has had physical issues and Nadal already beat him three times this year.
Regarding djoker's draw: the only ones that are dangerous for Nadal would be a davydenko and roddick. I sincerely doubt that fish keeps this form going into USO(see what happened to ljubicic after his MS final this year) and three out of five is a different ball game. Ditto for Baghdatis's form.
I am merely STATING what I think about Nadal's draw, the degree of tougness, not that it should be easier, poor rafa and yadda yadda. I think it is a tough draw and from what I've read online so far, so do most people, including a couple of supposedly neutral journalists.
Compare it to last year's draw, which relatively easy: gasquet-kiefer-almagro-monfils-gonzalez(this one was tricky) up until SF.