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.