Barcelona Semifinals

In the quartefinals, I figured that there were three matches which could potentially have upsets. In the end, only one of them did, but it was an impressive upset. While Verdasco breezed past Gulbis and Ferrer had as little trouble with Bellucci as Soderling had with Schwank, Tsonga found himself in a real dogfight with Dutch youngster Thiemo De Bakker.

De Bakker has now had his first career top-ten victory against Tsonga, which is an impressive followup after beating Juan Carlos Ferrero in the last round. Tsonga was among the least accomplished clay court players that he could have faced at this stage, though. His next opponent will be last year's French Open finalist, Robin Soderling, who has yet to really break a sweat over the course of this tournament. It will be a tough ask for De Bakker to keep his tournament rolling at this stage, but he has a chance. You have to favor the Swede, but we could be looking at one of the future's big clay court players.

The other semifinal is much more of a toss-up, between two veteran Spaniards, who are no strangers to the red clay. Verdasco and Ferrer have met on tour eight times thus far, with Verdasco leading the head to head 5-3, and 5-2 on clay courts. He's also won the last two meetings, so the numbers seem to favor "Hot Sauce." The only stat seemingly in Ferrer's favor is that he beat Verdasco here in Barcelona in 2005. It could go either way, though, as Ferrer's career record on clay is more impressive than Verdasco's.

No matter what, this will be an exciting final on Sunday.