Week 6 Wrap-Up, Week 7 Preview

There were several wild matches to wrap up in the past weekend of tennis, and a couple enticing tournaments on the horizon, so I won't waste any time.

I was at the San Jose tournament for the quarterfinals, which turned out to be an excellent day of tennis. The semifinal between Roddick and Querrey turned out to be the match of the week, though. Roddick won in three sets despite never even getting a break point against Querrey's serve. Tough loss for the young American, but he's shown that he's clearly recovered from last year's injury and ready to be a force again this year. He emphasized that fact by winning the doubles title with Mardy Fish.

Unfortunately, all that tennis turned out to be a little much for Andy Roddick, who lost the final to Verdasco, who had a much easier road to the final. While Roddick was facing Querrey and Berdych, the Spaniard only had to get through Uzbek Denis Istomin and 19-year old Lithuanian Ricardas Berankis. Not really equal competition on each side of the draw, in the end. Still, a strong performance from Roddick, who hopefully won't be too exhausted to perform well in Washington (more on that in a moment).

The finals at the other two tournaments this week weren't quite at the same level, even though though they did also each feature a player who had spent all of his energy just getting to that stage.

In Rotterdam, Youzhny had to retire against Soderling after the Russian had upset Djokovic in the semis, while Soderling notched his first big win of the year over the top-ranked Russian who had been the hottest three-set player on the tour, Nikolay Davydenko. Good for Soderling, who started off the year in poor form, to get things back on track.

In Costa do Sauipe, Ferrero breezed past Lukas Kubot, who apparently used up everything he had to beat Igor Andreev in the semifinals. Kubot managed only one game against the top seed. I was expecting Ferrero to face local favorite Tomaz Bellucci in the semis, but Bellucci was upset by another Brazilian player, the journeyman pro Ricardo Mello. Alas, Mello couldn't mount recapture that magic in the semis.

Looking ahead to next week's action, the next red clay tournament of the year in Buenos Aires features many familiar faces from the past two weeks. Ferrero is back, but Bellucci is taking the week off. The top seed this week is Spaniard David Ferrer, and there are also a handful of fresh faces, including wildcards Carlos Moya and Gaston Gaudio. Gasquet is supposed to be back in action this week, as well as the wayward Argentine, returning to play on home soil at least, David Nalbandian. He's been out of action for almost a year, so I'm eager to see how he does here.

In Marseille, last week's champion Soderling is back in action, as is finalist Youzhny, assuming he can recover from whatever forced him to retire. Tsonga, Monfils, and Benneteau make up the home-crowd seeds, and they're joined by Marcos Baghdatis and Tommy Robredo. Baggy is having a great year, but still hasn't quite reached his top ten form. Robredo hasn't done much of anything since winning the Hopman Cup over Andy Murray. The draw is filled out with a bevy of French and European players, including Arnaud Clement, the Rochus brothers, and Denis Istomin, who flew over from San Jose.

Speaking of San Jose, Roddick and Verdasco are the top seeds once again in Memphis, but who knows how tired they'll be. Surprisingly, Roddick plays unseeded James Blake in his first-round match, and James just had to fly back from the Netherlands. Why are these guys jetting around so much? Verdasco's opener isn't much easier, as he faces young, big-hitting Frenchman Jeremy Chardy. The other seeds in the draw are mostly familiar faces, except for John Isner, who's back in action after his great start to the year.

Isner opens against American teen and qualifier Ryan Harrison. Surprisingly, Harrison qualified while "The Donald" Young fell short. There are a ton of interesting first-round matches here, though. Querrey plays Rajeev Ram, who beat him at the Newport final last year. Radek Stepanek opens against Kevin Anderson, Jarkko Nieminen plays Dudi Sela, Benjamin Becker plays Ivo Karlovic, and Xavier Malisse plays Tommy Haas. That's a lot of matches between players of very comparable skill levels, as of late. There could be some firecrackers in there. And if Roddick and Verdasco are tired from their play in San Jose, this tournament could bust wide open.