Monte Carlo Semifinals

It looks like the topsy-turvy world of tennis we saw in the first two Masters Series events of the year may have calmed down somewhat. The final four standing in the first Masters tournament played on clay feature four very familiar faces, and four of the best clay-court players on tour. Fernando Verdasco is actually the weakest of the players remaining, since his game is a big more situated towards hard courts to the detriment of his clay court prowess. The other three have all had good results on hard courts, but their games are at their best when they're on red clay.

Verdasco faces Novak Djokovic, who is looking to pick up his clay-court season where he left it in 2009, before his amazing semifinal loss to Nadal at Rome. After that, which was one of the best matches of the year, he was hung over at Roland Garros and didn't play up to his potential. Prior to that, he had been the second-best clay court player on tour, after Nadal. So far, he's been playing very strong tennis, winning both of his matches on clay against the U.S. in Davis Cup, and yet to drop a set here in Monte Carlo, despite some tough opposition. You have to favor Djokovic in this match, as I believe he has both better shotmaking and a better chance to be solid from the baseline.

The other semifinal features David Ferrer facing off against Rafael Nadal, which will probably be even more one-sided. Verdasco and Ferrer are fine players, top-ten quality guys, no doubt. But they're playing against the two best guys on tour on this surface, and Ferrer in particular is facing the best player ever on clay. So it's a really tough ask to beat him. Nadal has only lost 16 matches on clay in his career, and that's against 181 wins and 25 titles. That's just mind-boggling.

It's almost a certainty that Nadal will face Djokovic in the final at this point, and that's an appetizing matchup, after the battles they had last year. Ferrer and Verdasco are out to spoil the party, but I don't give either of them a huge chance to do so. After some crazy and unexpected results in Miami and Indian Wells, it's maybe a nice thing to have the top two seeds meet in the final, here. But we'll just have to wait and see.