Week 28 Quarterfinals

This brief relapse into clay-court tennis is moving along nicely, and we're down to the last eight in each of the two tournaments taking place this week. The only top five seed who hasn't made it to this stage of the tournament is Nikolay Davydenko, who lost in a tight match to Daniel Gimeno-Traver. Davydenko is still not having a great time after his injury lay-off. Other than that, the rest of the players that you would expect to have made it this far have done so.

But the way the match-ups have broken down, the only two seeded players meeting tomorrow are at the bottom of their respective draws, but those are also the best match - on paper - by far. Tommy Robredo, who's been on quite a slide lately, meets Fernando Verdasco, who also hasn't been making much noise since before the French Open. They're 4-4 against each other, but this is only their third meeting on clay, which is a bit of a surprise to me. It should be a good match.

That's in Bastad, and in Stuttgart, Albert Montanes gets Jurgen Melzer, who might just be bound for the top ten if he can keep up the sort of form he's had lately. I give him the edge over Montanes, for sure.

Other than those two matches, I think the seeded players have the advantage in all of their matches, and Swiss number three Marco Chiudinelli may make it to the semifinals in place of Davydenko.

Another reason that this little stretch of the tennis calendar is somewhat dead is that this is also the World Team Tennis season, such as it is. It's a really strange little league, filled mostly with fourth or fifth-tier players, while each team has one or two stars to draw the crowds. I saw the Bryan Brothers play tonight in Kansas City, and it was a really weird experience. In addition to the Bryans, I saw Ricardo Mello, Rik De Voest, Martin Damm, Chanelle Scheepers, Carly Gullickson, and Jarmila Groth. All fine players, but it became immensely clear once Damm and De Voest took on the Bryans in doubles that they were on a completely different tier. It was great to see the Bryans in action, but it sure didn't last very long.

I'm looking forward to things to pick up a bit - and next week's inaugural tennis tournament in Atlanta (after Indianapolis lost its sponsor) just got a big boost as Andy Roddick agreed to play. He was doing so great in the U.S. earlier this year, his performance dipped a bit in Europe. Here's hoping he can get back to his prior level next week.