NEW YORK -- She is a little bug they cannot crush.
She is Melanie Oudin, age 17, a four-match sensation at the biggest tennis carnival in the world, the U.S. Open.
She left home in Marietta, Ga., to come to New York City and see whether she could make it there. Little did she know, thanks to television and the Internet, she would make it everywhere.
She is 5 feet 6 and seems to have a specialty. She beats Russians, usually big Russians. She is in the round of 16 because she did it again Monday, sending away 5-foot-11 Nadia Petrova, the 13th-seeded player, 1-6, 7-6 (2), 6-3.
When she steps out there, it never seems like a fair fight. She took out her first Russian, 5-9 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, in straight sets, then lost first sets to 5-11 Elena Dementieva and 6-2 Maria Sharapova before coming back to win.
Maybe it's the other way around. Maybe it's not a fair fight because Oudin is in it. They are beanstalks and she is Jack.
Monday's victim, Petrova, who was once No. 3 in the world and was playing in her 37th Grand Slam tournament, won the prize of the day for silly spin with her attempt to explain how this gnat keeps avoiding getting swatted.
"The way she's built, it's actually an advantage," Petrova said. "It's much easier for her to move around the court than for someone as tall as me or Maria or Elena."
Whatever it is, Oudin has become the Russian Killer of the 2009 U.S. Open.
Next up for Oudin, depending on a later Monday match, could be yet another Russian, assuming that 2004 champion Svetlana Kuznetsova advances against Denmark's Caroline Wozniacki.
Petrova threw Kuznetsova under the bus on her way out the door.
"Now she gets hopefully a short and a little chubby Russian," Petrova said of the 5-8 Kuznetsova. "See how she's going to handle that."
Oudin will attempt to handle that as she has handled the rest, while making a tennis-career breakthrough on the most public of stages.
"I'm just going to keep playing my same game, keep fighting," she said.
She lost the first set to Petrova, a player more mechanical than athletic, whose father was a top hammer-thrower and mother an Olympic sprinter, by succumbing to big serves and heavy ground strokes.
But once she broke serve to get to 3-1 of the second, she got herself and the wildly enthusiastic 23,000-plus crowd fired up. Even when she slipped back to 3-3, they stayed with her as she saved two break points with Petrova serving at 4-3, 40-15.
