Cincinnati Quarterfinals

The round of 16 was quite a day of tennis. Of the seven matches that were played (Federer got a walkover from Kohlschreiber), every one had a set that went at least to 7-5. Four of the matches went to three sets, and in three of those matches, the ultimate winner of the match lost the first set and had to come back. Nadal saved a match point, Roddick needed something like five or six before he could close the match out, and Murray had to win a third-set tiebreak against Gulbis. Crazy stuff, all around. If Nalbandian hadn't double-faulted on match point against Djokovic, I wouldn't have liked the Serb's chances in a third, in that heat.

The only matches that were pretty straightforward were Mardy Fish over Richard Gasquet and Marcos Baghdatis over Tomas Berdych. That second one is a bit of shock - it's one of Baggy's biggest wins in a long time, against one of the players who was in consideration to take this title. He'll get Nadal in the next round, and Nadal was not at his best against Frenchman Julien Benneteau. The Spaniard had to save a match point in the second set tiebreak, but once he won that tiebreak, the Frenchman absolutely wilted. He started cramping - he just didn't have anything left. Credit to him for playing the match out, and then going on to lose his doubles match in the night session as well, but that's just a brutal day. He played brilliant tennis to get to the finish line. He just couldn't cross it.

Federer, who has played a grand total of 7 games to get the quarterfinals, gets Nikolay Davydenko. The only chance that the Russian has is if Federer is put off by not being on court very much this week. He may have beaten Federer in two of their last three meetings, but he has not been playing at his highest level, whereas Federer just came off a great run last week. Tough to see Davydenko pull off this upset, unless Federer is out of sorts.

Again, the bottom half is more loaded - Mardy Fish gets Andy Murray in the quarters, and Fish has won their last two meetings, as well. Murray may be in great form, but he's also played a lot of tennis, and getting taken to a third-set tiebreak by Gulbis today won't have helped him. Fish had a relatively easy, 69-minute win over Gasquet. I really give Mardy a real shot at pulling off this upset, if he can come up with his best stuff. They're playing in the first singles of the match of the day (for British television, I assume) and that gives Murray the least amount of recovery time he could have gotten. It's a tough set of conditions for the Scot, honestly.

The last quarterfinal match is between Djokovic and Roddick - Djokovic had the smoother passage to this round, but he didn't look that good in the process. He was hurting in the heat, and it looks like they'll be playing tomorrow during the hottest part of the day. Assuming that Roddick can recover from his late start, the conditions definitely favor him. Roddick has won the last three against the Djoker, in conditions similar to these. Roddick will need to play better on the big points than he did against Soderling (2 for 12 on break points? That's bad even for Andy) but he's got a real shot here.

Can you bet that the Cincinnati organizers are praying for a Federer-Nadal and Andy-Andy set of semifinals? That's about as good as they could have hoped. Fish-Roddick wouldn't be as good for the international market, but it might help get people in the U.S. to pay a bit more attention. Really, there aren't any bad match-ups left. If Baghdatis pulls of the upset, a Baggy-Fed semifinal is a grand slam final rematch. If Fish and Djokovic play, that was the Indian Wells final a couple years ago. These are eight excellent tennis players, and I'm just excited to be able to watch them play.