Week 23 Quarterfinals

We're most of the way through the first week of the grass court season, and things are pretty bizarre. In Halle, six of the eight seeds are already out of action. The only players remaining are Roger Federer and Lleyton Hewitt. Five of the remaining eight players are actually German, if you can believe that. Considering that there were only eight Germans in the draw to begin with, that's a pretty impressive line-up. That said, I think the odds of a German taking home the Halle title are pretty small, since Federer is still there. I was wrong when I mentioned that Haas beat Fed here last year - Federer didn't play Halle after he won the French Open. Haas beat Djokovic to win the title.

So that means that Federer is riding a ridiculous winning streak in Halle - it's got to be one of the longest winning streaks of any player at any tournament, if not the longest. I don't know who's going to beat him. Kohlschreiber is 0-4 against Federer, and he's really the toughest competition remaining, with the exception of Hewitt. It would be a pretty intense meltdown from Fed if he fails to break his title-less streak and continue his unbeaten run in Halle.

In Queens, things were rolling along as one might expect until today, when everything went to hell. There was some trouble with rain, and here are the casualties: Gasquet withdrew with a back injury, Roddick lost to Dudi Sela, Djokovic lost to Xavier Malisse, Cilic lost to Llodra, and Andy Murray was tied 3-all in the third against Mardy Fish when the match was called on account of darkness. And Nadal nearly lost to Denis Istomin of all people. Sometimes, unusual weather can be a real leveler.

A lot of the players who lost were really hoping to get some match practice in before Wimbledon, so expect a few players to start angling for wildcards to next week's tournament, which usually has a lack of top players. Andy Roddick in particular has won three matches in the last two and a half months. That's not the kind of preparation he wants heading into Wimbledon. Sam Querrey, on the other hand, seems to have recovered from the ennui that plagued him at the French and has a real shot of making the final here. We'll see how the weekend plays out, and if the big upsets are already past, or if they might continue.