Surprisingly Good Quarterfinal Day!

Considering the strength of the draws in Auckland and Sydney this week, I'm really surprised at how good the quarterfinals are today.

All of the seeds are through in Auckland, except for Juan Monaco and Albert Montanes, who lost to Viktor Troicki and John Isner, respectively. I already know the outcome of one match, and American Sam Querrey upset Nicolas Almagro. Good for the big-serving American! We've also got Kohlschreiber (defending champion) against number two seed David Ferrer. Troicki is up against Juan Martin del Potro, who should move through comfortably, and Isner is up against Robin Soderling. Lots of aces are on the way in that way, but Soderling is much more solid in the rest of the game, so I'd expect him to move through.

In Sydney, you've got some big upsets - Gasquet over Gilles Simon, Hewitt over Fish and then Tipsarevic, and Mario Ancic over Tommy Robredo. Jarkko Nieminen also beat Chris Guccione, who ousted Tomas Berdych earlier. Three spectacular semis: Djokovic-Ancic, Tsonga-Nieminen, and Nalbandian-Hewitt. Gasquet has the easiest time with surprising quarterfinalist Jeremy Chardy. I'll take Djoko, Tsonga, Nalby, and Gasquet into the semis. And that's a pretty enticing pair of matches, too!

In Kooyong, Ljubicic is having some trouble - his best days are definitely behind him, as he even lost to slumping Marcos Baghdatis. Federer is currently in the process of thumping Fernando Verdasco, and later in the day we'll see Moya v. Cilic (two players at opposite positions in the arc of their careers) and, presumably, Wawrinka v. Gonzalez, even though it isn't on the schedule. It's quite a motley crew of players out there, this year. Not a lot we can glean about the AO from the play at Kooyong.

I'm getting a DVR for my cable tomorrow so that I can watch as much of the Australian Open as is humanly possible. I'm rather excited.

A note on the state of tennis broadcasting

I don't have a lot to say about play from today. The problem with the tennis season while it's taking place in Australia at the beginning of the year is that play is already taking place when I get home from work and want to write about it. Do I write about the day before? Or the play that's already started? It's just tough for me to quite work out, so I can't do the end-of-day summaries that I like.

As for the updates for today, Del Potro beat Gulbis and Querrey beat Gilles Muller in three. Tipsarevic beat Fish yesterday, who is now 0-2 on the season, and is currently up a break on Lleyton Hewitt, who struggled in his first round Julien Benneteau. Gasquet beat Tursunov, and Stepanek retired against qualifier Jeremy Chardy. It kind of interrupts your momentum if you win a tournament and then retire during you next match. Australian number 2 Chris Guccione upset perennial underachiever Tomas Berdych, as well. Djokovic managed an easy win against Paul-Henri Mathieu, which is good for him.

As for Kooyong, I know that the first two rounds are completed, but I have no idea who won them. I'll bet Federer beat Moya, but I don't know who would win between the badly-streaking pair of Baghdatis versus Wawrinka. I'll take both Fernandos to win later in the day, Verdasco over Cilic and Gonzalez over Ljubicic.

I'm cheating a bit on that prediction, though, because I'm watching live, streaming Kooyong action on www.channelsurfing.net, and I can see that Cilic is a bit flat while Verdasco is playing very well, so far. It may be shocking, but this is the first actual tennis I've been able to watch this year.

Unfortunately, I live in a building where my internet and cable providing options are extremely limited. Limited to one, in fact. And the one that I have does not offer the tennis channel, no matter how much I could offer to pay them. In addition, they don't make me eligible to enjoy the live streaming of espn360.com. That means that I don't have a lot of options to watch tennis, even though as you can see I'm a raving fanatic.

Fortunately, there are often chances to watch streaming tournaments of varying quality and dubious legality, and I take advantage of them whenever I can. Last year, I purchased live streaming for Wimbledon and the Masters Series events, and I would have done it for every Grand Slam (and almost every tournament) if I could have. This year, the ATP is expanding the scope of tournaments that their official video website will broadcast, and I couldn't be more happy. If ESPN doesn't want to show tennis, and if my cable provider doesn't want to show the Tennis Channel, I'm happy to get my fix however I can. I would pay $200 a year to watch streaming video from a tournament every week. Maybe more.

Kooyong Classic!

Surprisingly, both Andys are taking the week before the Australian Open off. This may not be too odd for Murray, but Roddick has played the Kooyong Classic exhibition for as long as can remember. He's the three-time defending champion there, and he's not playing it, this year. It's not as strong a field as it has been in the past, and Federer is leading the group. If he doesn't win every match he plays at this tournament, then his odds at the AO drop drastically.

He's up against Baghdatis, Marin Cilic, Ivan Ljubijic, the two Fernandos, Verdasco and Gonzalez, Carlos Moya, and Stan Wawrinka. Nobody in that group has beat him in the past year, if I'm not mistaken. Gonzo beat him at the end-of-year Masters in 2007, but that's it. Fed should decimate this field, if he's even a shadow of his former self.

In other news, the opening rounds at Auckland and Sydney have some interesting things going on. Sadly, Frank Dancevic (a player I root for whenever I get the chance) lost in the first round to Igor Andreev. The Canadian number one really deserves a break-out performance, one of these days. Nishikori retired with an injury agaisnt Juan Carlos Ferrero, and I hope he recovers in a week.

While Dancevic didn't do so well, both John Isner and Gilles Muller won their opening round matches in Auckland, with Isner beating seventh seed Albert Montanes. Ernests Gulbis also won his first-round match, which means he'll be playing Juan Martin del Potro, soon. Gulbis may have beaten a rusty Djokovic last week, but I'm not sure that lightning is going to strike twice.