Wimbledon Day 8

The women's quarterfinals were completed today, and there were two pretty shocking upsets. Former champion Venus Williams lost to Bulgarian Tsvetana Pironkova, who had previously won a single match at Wimbledon in four tries. She's now into the semis, where she'll face Vera Zvonareva, who beat Kim Clijsters in another shocking result. Serena's victory over Na Li was pretty straightforward, and her opponent in the semis will be Petra Kvitova. Of the four players remaining in the women's draw, one of them has made it to a grand slam final (Serena) one of the others has made it past the fourth round at a grand slam before (Zvonareva).

At this point, if Serena doesn't take this title, it will be an incredible disappointment. It would always have been the case, but let's be honest here, the players that are left - they're sort of scrubs. I'll be shocked if Serena loses a set in the last two rounds, honestly. Really disappointing for Clijsters and Venus, who were slated to meet in the semis. And it's a shame for the promoters, too - who's going to be beating down the gates to get to the Pironkova_Zvonareva semifinal?

As for the men, the quarterfinals are up tomorrow and we're one player short of having all the top dogs there. The world's top four are present, and they're each facing a tough opponent - with one exception.

Federer takes on Tomas Berdych, who beat Fed at the Olympics in 2004 and this year at Miami, but otherwise has not won a match. He nearly had him at the Australian Open a few years, but duffed an easy volley at break point in the third set, and then was never in the match again. Berdych is finally getting himself together in order to play up to his potential at slams, with a recent semifinal run at the French. It will be a huge shock if he upsets Federer, since Fed, once he struggled through his first few rounds, seem to be back on his feet.

Rafael Nadal gets Robin Soderling, once again. This will be very interesting, as the pair had a very contentious Wimbledon match a few years ago, which - as you may recall - ended with some bad blood between the players. Of course, their recent rivalry is much more interesting, but no matter how soundly Soderling thwacked Nadal at the French last year, Nadal's victory this year in the final was much more emphatic. If it hadn't been for that match against Ferrer, I'd give Robin a chance, but in their last rounds, Nadal looked to be the better player, with Soderling's level of player going up and down - and in his bad patches, he looked really bad. As long as Nadal's knees hold up, and Soderling has a lapse or two or doesn't reach his highest level, then Nadal will come out the victor.

The third quarterfinal is Andy Murray against JW Tsonga, which could be interesting, but probably won't be. Tsonga beat Murray in a thrilling match in the first round of the Australian Open in 2008, the start of his run to the final, but really, Tsonga has not been able to play at that level since that tournament. Murray is the more solid and has looked better this week. Tsonga will have to find some special magic to win this one.

The final quarterfinal, which should have been Novak Djokovic against Andy Roddick instead features... Yun-Tsun Lu? Not much to say, here. Lu's dream run ends at the quarterfinals. There's no way Djokovic is going to make the same mistake that Roddick did, simple as that.