It’s not easy to be a U.S. Open qualifier

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It’s interesting each year to read the results of the U.S. Open tennis qualifying tournaments. Some 128 men and 128 women get to play a pre-tournament and try to earn one of 16 spots reserved in the main tournament field for those players whose rankings aren’t high enough to get an automatic spot and whose drawing power or possible future abilities aren’t great enough for the United States Tennis Assn. to offer up a wild-card entry -- a freebie usually given to up-and-comers or already-been-theres who might have been injured or just reaching a rough patch.

Vincent Spadea wasn’t one of the lucky ones. Spadea, who in 1994 was the youngest American man to be ranked in the top 100, is 35 now. Even though he’s twice reached the fourth round of the U.S. Open (he was also a quarterfinalist once at the Australian Open), Spadea is ranked No. 130 in the world and on Wednesday he lost his first-round qualifying match to Slovenia’s Luka Gregorc, 6-4, 7-6 (2).

Spadea has always been fun to watch, a vocal, sweaty, emotional guy who would almost always reward fans on a far outer court of the Open to a raucous effort, win or lose. Hopefully he got a nice hand Wednesday.

And fun-loving French shotmaker Arnaud Clement, a 31-year-old once ranked No. 10 in the world, was also eliminated in the qualifier, losing 7-6 (6), 7-6 (4) by American Tim Smyczek, a 21-year-old from Milwaukee who is ranked No. 282 in the world and who apparently wasn’t a promising-enough young American to get one of those wild cards either. Arnaud is only 5 feet 8 but his clever net work and quirky serve often bedeviled bigger, faster, more powerful opponents. Hopefully he got a nice hand on Wednesday too.

Check out all the qualifer scores -- men’s and women’s.

-- Diane Pucin