Paris Semifinals

Today were the BNP Paribas Masters quarterfinals, which featured two high-quality matches, one of uneven quality, and one washout.

Rafael Nadal and J.W. Tsonga played excellent tennis for two sets, with Nadal proving himself to be the better player by a very small margin, winning 7-5, 7-5. After two very shaky matches against Almagro and Robredo, in which he saved numerous match points and broke his opponents while they were serving for the match (I believe) three times, Nadal has returned to his something resembling his imperious form. This may have been his best match since his injury over the summer, when he missed Wimbledon. It's a shame for Tsonga, who was trying to defend his title and once again reach the last eight in London in a few weeks, but he simply ran into a better play today. Tsonga's only win over Nadal remains in the semifinals of the 2008 Australian Open, where JW mopped the floor with Nadal. Unfortunately for Tsonga, he's never quite been able to recapture that level of play.

The other excellent semifinal was a first meeting between two young players, Gael Monfils and Marin Cilic. Cilic was the steadier player at the beginning of the match, but after the Frenchman made a handful of absolute highlight-reel shots, the crowd got into it and Cilic lost his focus. He began missing forehands and giving Monfils way too many chances. Despite nearly injuring himself going for an impossible shot on his first match point, Monfils won in three and produced some scintillating tennis in the process. He still won despite winning one fewer point than his opponent. I guess some of his must have just counted for more. Seriously, two or three of the shots he made in this match would make it into a top 25 shots of the year compilation.

Soderling-Djokovic was less stellar, with neither player reaching a very high level of tennis for very long. Soderling was 3 for 14 on break points, which is just not an acceptable stat against a player as good as Djokovic. They each won 78 points, but Djokovic came out on top, and he'll look to continue his strong form at the end of this season.

The last match was a pretty big let-down, as the abdominal injury that's been hampering JMDP all week finally caught up with him, and he retired down 0-4 against Radek Stepanek. Here's hoping DelPo can recover in time for the year-end championships.

So for tomorrow, we have a potentially blockbuster matchup between the 2 and 3 players in the world, as well as another match between two of the biggest characters on tour. It seems unlikely that the Nadal-Djokovic match will meet the standard of play that they reached earlier in the year in Madrid. Prior to today's matches, you would have Djokovic as the prohibitive favorite, since he's on a winning streak and just beat Federer on his home turf, while Nadal seemed to have not yet recovered his game completely. But today, Nadal was sharp and Djokovic looked off. So who knows how the match-up will go tomorrow?

As for Stepanek-Monfils, all I can say is that there will be some shot-making guaranteed, a lot of playing to the crowd, and probably some faking injury from one or the other player. It's also a tough match to call, but I'm going to say that Monfils should recreate the Parisian magic that Tsonga enjoyed last year and make it to the final on his home soil.