NEW YORK -- Dinara Safina can't catch a break.

She's the No. 1 seed at the U.S. Open and her brother Marat, playing his final tournament at the National Tennis Center, is getting the majority of the family's headlines.

Talk about a lack of respect. Even Kim Clijsters -- who isn't seeded here after a two-year sabbatical -- is getting more ink.

Before the tournament, Safina was asked what she thought about Clijsters' comeback.

"I think," Safina said, "I already answered it 100 times."

Safina hits massive groundstrokes from both sides, sometimes inappropriately large. In other words, Safina has a difficult time dialing down the pace and it hurts her against the better players. Sometimes, even lesser players.

Take, for example, her first-round match on Tuesday against Olivia Rogowska, a seeming mismatch that, inexplicably, required 2 hours, 35 minutes.

Safina entered the match with the best women's winning percentage (52-12, .813) and Rogowska was merely happy to be in the draw. The 18-year-old from Australia was given a wild card and came in with a single career title as a professional and one victory over a top-50 player, Maria Kirilenko at Roland Garros.

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Dinara Safina came eminently close to becoming the first top-seeded woman to lose in the first round of the U.S. Open.

And yet, there was Rogowska, absolutely fearless, looking for her second match win in a major. She won the first set in a tiebreaker when Safina's omnipresent nerves made an appearance at the worst possible time. After hitting an awkward backhand into the net to give Rogowska a set point, her serve imploded. The first effort landed in the net, 6 inches from the court, and the second was sprayed long.

This was, potentially, a big deal. No top seed on the women's side at the U.S. Open in the Open era had ever lost a first-round match. It's only happened four times in the majors in 41 years. The highest seed to lose in those circumstances was Martina Navratilova, a third seed in 1976.

Predictably -- surely, that kind of history would have been too much to process -- Safina worked her way back into the match and she was able to subdue the No. 167-ranked player in the world. The final was 6-7 (5), 6-2, 6-4, but Safina was challenged. Rather, she challenged herself.

"A total mental battle," ESPN analyst Mary Joe Fernandez observed. "She fought herself."

"I try to do something good, but when it doesn't go good, then I go like too much into myself, what I'm doing right, wrong, instead of thinking more what I have to do with the ball," Safina explained.

Safina trailed 3-0 in the third set before nerves did in Rogowoska. It was a dramatic ending, but not aesthetically pleasing tennis. Too many unforced errors (65), particularly on the forehand side, and double faults (13) erased Rogowoska's narrow margin for error.

"Just guts," was Safina's assessment.

First-round glitches aside, it couldn't lay out any better for the 23-year-old Russian. Safina's floating well under the radar and many of her top rivals will eliminate each other before they get to her.

The big excitement in the women's draw is the bottom half, where Clijsters and Serena and Venus Williams are all butting heads. The good news for Safina? Only one of them can emerge as an opponent in the final. Meanwhile, with Elena Dementieva and Maria Sharapova destined for a third-round match, Safina's biggest concerns on the way to the final are Jelena Jankovic (in the quarters) and Svetlana Kuznetsova (in the semifinals).

There is this one, small problem, the massive elephant in the room:

Safina is ranked No. 1 on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour and has won three titles this year, at Rome, Madrid and Portoroz (that's in Slovenia for you geography buffs at home). She has, to her credit, won her first six matches at two of the year's Grand Slam singles events. Safina lost the seventh in straight sets on both occasions, most recently at Roland Garros (to Kuznetsova) and earlier in Australia, falling to Serena.

Williams, of course, is ranked No. 2. She has failed to become a winner at her past 16 regular WTA Tour event stops, but she owns two of this year's major titles. This prompted a protracted -- and entertaining -- back-and-forth between the two players after Safina ascended to No. 1 some 22 weeks ago.

Here at the Open, however, the combatants have been silenced.

"I've talked about it a lot," Serena said last week. "If you want to read some answers that I said, you can. But I think we should talk about something else. Any other question that's not about No. 1?"

Safina, asked (again) to respond to Serena's previous, pointed remarks, was not drawn in.

"I don't care," she said. "I don't care. Really."

That blasé attitude carried onto the court on Tuesday. Going forward, Safina needs to find a way to carry herself like the No. 1 player in the world -- against the best players and those ranked No. 167.

"It happens that you have a bad day and you want to say, 'I hate everything,' " Safina said. "But at the end of the day you win the match, even like this, I would say a little bit ugly. But you come in the hotel and you are like, 'I made it. I pulled it out.' That's what counts for me."

Five things we learned on Day 2

1. Nicolas Massu is no longer a red-hot Chilean: Five years ago, Massu was the first double tennis Olympic gold medalist in eight decades. He won the singles in Athens and teamed with Fernando Gonzalez to win the doubles.

On Tuesday, Gonzalez -- a bronze medalist in singles in 2004 -- turned it around in an all-Chile first-round match. Gonzo won all three sets by the identical score of 6-3. Massu is currently ranked No. 89 in the world and his record in 2009 is a not-so-hot 7-12.

2. Jelena Jankovic is off to a flying start: She won her first two matches against Roberta Vinci in third-set tiebreakers. This time around, it was far easier for the No. 5 seed.

Jankovic beat Vinci 6-2, 6-3 in a first-round match. After a disturbing dip in performance after she reached the No. 1 ranking last August, Jankovic is visibly gaining confidence; she took the title a few weeks ago in Cincinnati, beating Elena Dementieva and Dinara Safina in the last two matches.

"I have beaten a lot of top-five players, which is what you want in order to come back and feel where you are," Jankovic said. "I think I'm on the right track."

3. Ditto, for Sam Querrey (which is no great surprise): The 21-year-old kid who made the finals of four summer events (Newport, Indianapolis, Los Angeles and New Haven), dismissed American qualifier Michael Yani in straight sets.

Samurai Sam has now won 13 of his last 17 matches on hard courts -- and he, not James Blake or Mardy Fish, is the second-ranked American male after Andy Roddick. He'll play his second consecutive American in the second round, Kevin Kim, a winner over Dudi Sela in four sets.

4. Hey, that Elena Dementieva can really play: What? We already knew that? The favorite here in some people's minds (not Serena's) dropped all of three games to Camille Pin. Can she win her first career Grand Sam singles title?

"I think not to win a Grand Slam, it's not unfair and it's not unlucky," Dementieva said. "It's just how it is. You have to work hard if you want to win it.

"It's definitely a big goal in my career still. I'm just trying to work hard and let's see if I can do it."

5. Maria Sharapova looks like she means business: This is who Dementieva would see in the third round, believe it or not, because Sharapova is only seeded No. 29.

Sharapova smoked Tsvetana Pironkova 6-3, 6-0 on Tuesday in a crisp 73 minutes. It was like watching target practice, as Sharapova repeatedly banged forehands to the corners at will.

Greg Garber is a senior writer for ESPN.com.