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.

Paris Masters, 2nd Round

In the last tournament of the regular season for the ATP Tour, the third day of play was deceptively exciting. Considering that only two seeded players were upset and ten made it through, you wouldn't think that would make for one of the most exciting tennis days of the year, and one that compares with the first Saturday of the 2008 Australian Open, which is the most exciting single day of tennis that I can recall.

The two upsets were both thrilling matches, one was shocking and the other didn't come as much of a surprise. Tommy Haas had been struggling with illness - swine flu, in fact - and so there wasn't a lot of expectation for him to win over French stalwart and qualifier Arnaud Clement. But Haas won the first set and took it to a tiebreak in the third, losing a match point before Clement took the win. The shocking result was Roger Federer losing in three to Julien Benneteau, who had never before taken a set in their two previous meetings. Benneteau played out of his mind to win the second-set tiebreak and then break Federer in the third before he served it out.

In the other matches, Del Potro was pushed to a third set in his first match back after the U.S. Open by a retiring Marat Safin, who put on a pretty good show in his last professional match, but seemed to be happy to have it all done. I don't think he'll be back. That ceremony was pretty exciting, and it was followed by an out-of-sorts Rafael Nadal escaping by the skin of teeth against Nicolas Almagro. The older but less experienced Spaniard was dominating the match while Nadal was lagging, and Almagro led by a break in each set. He served for the match twice and was broken both times. Finally, he cramped in the third set and basically stood by and watched Nadal take the match. Almagro, when first serving for the match, had 40-0 on serve, and couldn't close it out. Tough loss for him - you know he'll be working on his conditioning in the offseason.

The other matches were also good, but less stunning than those above. Big servers and frequent spoilers Ivo Karlovic and John Isner could have ended the End of Year Championships hopes for Robin Soderling and Fernando Gonzalez, but both of the giants lost in two sets. James Blake nearly managed to salvage a bit of his season by taking Andy Murray to two tiebreaks, but ended up losing his match in three.

Some very competitive tennis - not all of it scintillating, but all of it exciting. This kind of play this late in the year does not do much for the argument about shortening the season. As sympathetic as I am to the players, as a fan, I wish I could have this every day.