Week 14 Semifinal Preview

We're up to the semifinals at the first four clay court tournaments of the season, and unfortunately, the biggest story of the week is not a good one. Wayne Odesnik, convicted of possessing and smuggling HGH into Australia earlier in the year, is still playing at this year's U.S. Clay Court Championships in Houston. Pete Bodo has the best look at the whole situation, but the summary is this:

There is no possible way, based on any evidence that we've been presented with thus far, that Odesnik will not get out of a suspension. He's been convicted of possession, and that is punishable in the same way that a positive drug test would have been. So it's a near-certainty that he'll be out of the game for two years, and all of his results between his conviction and his suspension will be nullified. His prize money, too. So that means he's playing in this tournaments - and making the the quarterfinals, thus far - for nothing, except denying other players their shot.

It's either really stupid, or really shameless, or both. I don't have a lot of sympathy for this guy at this point, and I hope that he loses to Querrey in the next round, or else he has a real shot at winning at the tournament, which is absolutely a terrible result for all involved. The ATP needs to review their policies after this whole ordeal and get some sort of a provisional suspension in place so that this does not happen again. It's just not acceptable. Hopefully, Querrey can end this story before it becomes a real problem for the ITF and the WADA.

In any case, the other semifinal in Houston, which looked like it would be Gonzalez and Hewitt, is instead Juan Ignacio Chela and Horacio Zeballos. Not quite the blockbuster that the organizers were hoping for. They're both relatively unknown players in the states, but both very talented clay court players, and either one has a legitimate shot of walking away with the title. Here's hoping that they beat Odesnik, if Querrey can't pull it off.

In Casablanca, things are relatively quiet. Victor Hanescu has been playing some great ball to beat Jarkko Nieminen, who blew through qualifying, and then former top-ten player Richard Gasquet, who still hasn't gotten his career Renaissance. Hanescu faces Florent Serra in one semifinal, while the other is top seed Stan Wawrinka against Italy's Potito Starace, who hasn't had the toughest draw, but hasn't lost a set and has been playing great ball. Really, any one of these players has a legitimate shot at the title, and it's tough to know who's going to come out on top.

Really, everyone's looking ahead to next week's tournament in Monte Carlo - the draw comes out tomorrow, so we'll take a look at that and see the real beginning of the clay court season starting next week. This is all just a warm-up.