Miami Round of 16

At last, we had a day go by without any major upsets on the men's side. The only nominal upset was American Mardy fish over Spaniard Feliciano Lopez, but Fish is so under-ranked thanked to injury, that this match was always going to tight. Other than that, the matches went by ranking on the men's side, though a few were close.

Federer should have taken care of Florent Serra without breaking a sweat. He was up a break in the first set, and up two breaks in the second, but he ended up needing two tiebreaks to win the match. A win is a win, and straight sets is good, but Federer has to be disappointed in squandering such a lead and turning what should have been a blowout into a tight match.

Mikhail Youzhny opted to wait until the second set to show up in his match against Stan Wawrinka. After losing the first set 1-6, he won the second set in a tiebreak and then won the third 7-5. Tough loss for Wawrinka, who just couldn't close out the Russian when the match got tight. Another player who missed out on a big scalp was Jurgen Melzer, who was dominating the match as it entered a second-set tiebreak. After he failed to capitalize, he faded, and Verdasco ran away with the third. Tough losses for both guys.

There were a few upsets on the women's side. Most notably, top seed Svetlana Kuznetsova lost to Frenchwoman Marion Bartoli. Kuznetsova has completely failed to capitalize on being the top seed at these two tournaments, not even making the quarterfinals at either Indian Wells or Miami. Tough year so far for last year's French Open champion. There were three other upsets, and two featured Belgians. Justine Henin beat eleventh seed Vera Zvonareva, while Kim Clijsters bludgeoned last year's champ Victoria Azarenka off the court. Sam Stosur also managed to beat last week's winner Jelena Jankovic, but she must have been exhausted.

Tomorrow, the men's remaining 16 players are all in action, so it goes without saying that there are some good matches to look at.

The least interesting match-up going on tomorrow is Tomaz Bellucci against Nicolas Almagro. It should be interesting - Bellucci is a solid young player who still doesn't have that many wins against the big guys, while Almagro can hit anyone off the court, including himself if he's not on during a particular match. This is Almagro's match to win or lose; it's somewhat out of the Brazilian's hands.

The winner of that match will face the winner of Andy Roddick and Benjamin Becker. That is to say, the winner faces Andy Roddick. Becker will have to play the match of his life to beat Roddick tomorrow, which is a possibility. The other chance is that Roddick is just starting to get tired from playing so much tennis, but otherwise, I see the American getting through.

The quarter opposite Roddick is much tighter. JW Tsonga plays against Juan Carlos Ferrero, which is a favorable match-up for the Frenchman, but Ferrero has been playing some excellent tennis in the last six weeks or so, so this could be tight. Another two Spaniards make up the other match to determine the quarterfinal, as Rafael Nadal plays David Ferrer. Ferrer has beaten Nadal twice on hardcourts, but has also lost once. Overall, he's 3-8, so he's definitely the underdog, but expect this to be a tough, grinding match.

In the opposite half of the draw, I think every match could go either way. Mardy Fish really is a real question mark, since he has been injured, but has done a lot of fitness training in his time off. If Youzhny goes off the boil, as he did at the beginning of the match today, then Fish has a real chance of making the quarters. His opponent will be a huge hitter, no matter what. Soderling and Gonzalez should feature some of the most serious ball striking you can ever hope to see. Gonzo is playing for his country in a way that one doesn't usually see outside of Davis Cup or the Olympics, so I give him the slight edge to upset the Swede.

In the opposite quarter, Cilic and Verdasco probably couldn't be any closer. Their record is 2-2. Both have been having good years but haven't had really great results lately. On paper, I give Cilic the advantage, but this is basically a pick-em for me. The last match of the day is Roger Federer and Tomas Berdych, who has managed one big win over Federer that looked like it augered well for his future, and since then, he's lost eight times in a row. He could pull the upset, but he's made a career of underachieving, so there's no real reason to think he won't this time around.

In the Women's game, expect a possible semifinal of three Belgians and Venus Williams. Wozniacki could beat Justine Henin (which might qualify as an upset, even though the Dane is number 2 in the world) but otherwise, that's both what I see in the future and what I hope to be able to watch.