ESPN 2007 US Open

NEW YORK -- The mobile units were out hawking Heinekens last week at the National Tennis Center -- for $8.25 a pop. Out of user-friendly spigots, no less. That works out to almost $50 for a six-pack, but, hey, it's the U.S. Open.

Too much information? Too bad.

On Labor Day -- admittedly, with a little too much free time on our hands -- we share the (highly subjective) Things We Have Learned in the first week in Flushing:

It's not always pretty being Maria
The comely No. 2 seed got decked in the third round -- her earliest Grand Slam exit in the past dozen appearances. Maria Sharapova won Wimbledon at the age of 17, but now she's positively ancient in contrast to some of the survivors in her bottom half of the draw, a bracket drowning in a sea of Z's.

Four teenagers -- Tamira Paszek (16), Agnes Szavay (18), Victoria Azarenka (18) and Agnieszka Radwanska (18) -- won their third-round matches and signaled an emerging European world order. In order, the Fab Four are from Austria, Hungary, Belarus and Poland -- at last check, a long way from Sharapova's home in Florida, a state that was once the epicenter of tennis.

Tennis is booming in Flushing
The first U.S. Open day session, on Monday, set a record when 35,058 passed through the turnstiles. Then things completely blew up.

On Tuesday, there was a new single-session attendance record (36,886) and a record for the daily total (60,619). On Friday, there was another single-session record (37,103) and daily total (60,836). And on Saturday, there was another double record, 37,350 for the day session and 61,083 for the combined.

Needless to say, the U.S. Tennis Association is on pace to break the all-time record for attendance over the fortnight, 2005's total of 656,536.

The superb tennis almost makes those $8.25 beers worth the sip.

Almost.

Not everyone has a sore throat
First, James Blake and Fabrice Santoro put on a ludicrous five-set show Thursday night/Friday morning. Then Novak Djokovic and Radek Stepanek went 4 hours, 44 minutes, and Mardy Fish pushed No. 8 seed Tommy Robredo to the limit Friday. On Saturday, Shahar Peer and Nicole Vaidisova needed 2 hours, 32 minutes, before Peer won a dramatic match in a third-set tiebreaker.

Richard Gasquet, you may remember, withdrew from his second-round match against Donald Young with a, uh, sore throat.

"With my illness, I'm sure I can't win this match," Gasquet said.

Courage, Richard, courage.

Reports of the death of American tennis …
… are, to borrow from Mark Twain, greatly exaggerated. We bring you Young, John Isner, Sam Querrey and Wayne Odesnik.

Isner, 22, and Young, 18, played their way into the third round, which was a big surprise because, going in, they hadn't won a single Grand Slam match between them.

"Isner and Young, they're going to be feel-good stories for this tournament," Andy Roddick observed. "The difference between that pressure and the pressure I have is they lose and it's OK."

Roddick and Blake, seeded Nos. 5 and 6, respectively, rolled into the round of 16, although Blake had a near-death experience in the second round against Frenchman Santoro.

Venus and Serena Williams? They're a decent bet to win three of the four women's Grand Slams in 2007. Who would have thought that?

Davydenko vs. gambling -- a push
Did someone mention betting?

No one in tennis is sure whether the No. 4-ranked Russian was involved in fixing an Aug. 2 match in Poland. But there's one thing you can take to the bank: Nikolay Davydenko has been cooperative and gracious in dealing with the media's questions on the subject.

Funny, even.

"I don't live in Moscow," Davydenko told reporters here. "I don't know really guys from Russian Mafia. … It's pretty tough to say about Russian Mafia. Maybe if you go to Brooklyn you find Russian Mafia here in New York.

"Why not speak about Italian guy? He's also from Mafia, no?"

The fashion assassin
Mandatory on the Grand Slam check list: See what Bethanie Mattek is wearing. Her outfits are sort of like car crashes -- even though you know it's wrong, you can't help but look.

For her second-round match, the 22-year-old from Miami wore a silver-and-black ensemble only Raiders owner Al Davis could love. It featured a revealing silver spandex tank top from Bebe Sport, with a pleated (and criminally short) black skirt.

If the International Tennis Federation had fashion police, Mattek would be locked up for a long, long time. Mattek violated the long-standing fashion credo: Leave them wanting more, not less.

Janko Tipsarevic, on the other hand, had it going on with Bono-influenced, industrial arts-issued tinted glasses, two necklaces, a chin piercing and a collection of serious tattoos.

Don't Cry for Me …
… Argentina pushed five men into the third round in the bottom half of the draw, a record.

Agustin Calleri took out No. 16 seed Lleyton Hewitt in the second round and was joined by No. 20 seed Juan Ignacio Chela, No. 23 seed Juan Monaco, No. 24 seed David Nalbandian and 18-year-old Juan Martin del Potro -- a guy many see as a future top-10 player.

And that doesn't include the country's top-ranked player, No. 14 Guillermo Canas. In all, there are 10 Argentines ranked among the ATP's top 77 players -- tied for second with Spain. France has a dozen players ranked among that group.

Late night (early morning) with James Blake
Proof again that the sequel is never as good as the original.

As good as Blake-Santoro was, the Blake-Stefan Koubek marathon was dreadful. Can an entire match be an unforced error? Blake won in four sets, but there were more breaks (17) than holds (16) in the match, which ended at 1:04 a.m. local time.

"Man," said Thomas Blake, James' brother, after the match, "I don't know what to tell you."

Tell us, please, there will be no more night matches for your brother.

Mystery man
Ernests Gulbis, a 19-year-old from Latvia, was the only man to reach the third round and not receive a single media request for an interview. (He drew a crowd of six reporters after his three-set dismantling of No. 8 seed Robredo late Sunday night.)

He's ranked No. 88 in the world, the lowest-ranked and second-youngest player to win two matches. Gulbis (not pictured) is the only Latvian player to appear in a Grand Slam event in the Open era; this is a true but somewhat bogus statistic, given that Latvia has existed as a country independent of the Soviet Union only since 1992.

Sorry for the confusion.

Greg Garber is a senior writer for ESPN.com.