Week 44 Quarterfinals

Interesting results so far in this penultimate week of regular ATP action. Since it's the end of the season, some players are battered and bruised - before play even started, four of the sixteen seeds withdrew because of injury or exhaustion: Melzer, Youzhny, Tsonga, and Ljubicic. Three of them had been in finals just a few days prior, so it shouldn't be too surprising. Tsonga's season is over with a knee injury, so you can't blame him for pulling out, and Youzhny was hampered by a back problem in his loss in the final. But all three of them were in the running for the year-end finals in London, so it's a shame they couldn't try to make a big push.

As for that run-up to London, there were quite a few players who were still in the running who did make it to play this week. Fernando Verdasco, just on the verge of qualifying in ninth place, won one match before he got trounced by Gilles Simon. He's now won a single match since he made the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open, and unless he has a sharp turnaround in form and gets to at least the quarters in next week's masters event, it's almost certain that he'll miss out. The top contender who hadn't yet clinched his spot, Tomas Berdych, continued a similar vein of bad play in his loss to Tobias Kamke, but thanks to the poor performance of the other contenders, I am pretty confident that he'll stumble into the championships all the same. Marin Cilic also had a possibility of making the finals, but he lost to Nalbandian today, and he's done.

The players in seventh and eighth, the last two spots that haven't been decided, are the only ones doing well. David Ferrer is in to the quarterfinals in Valencia, while Andy Roddick is at the same stage in Basel. Both are showing good form, and should head into the finals with some momentum. It's almost a shame that there was so much chance for excitement as we come down to the wire, but it's all but assured at this point that the players who were in the top eight a month or so ago will remain in those positions and get to the final. Not a lot of movement in those top spots in the points race.

Anyway, the quarterfinals on offer tomorrow are really extremely strong, consider these are merely 500-level tournaments. It shows the depth of the draws, as well as the fact that not all of the top players run out of gas as the season winds down. In Basel, Roger Federer gets the tricky Czech Radek Stepanek - the match would have been potentially tough a year or two ago, but Stepanek has slowed down a lot this year, and he hasn't been able to frustrate opponents the way he used to. Particularly in his hometown tournament, you can expect Federer to get through without too much trouble.

Who Federer's opponent will be is not so clear, though. Andy Roddick plays David Nalbandian for a shot at Federer in the semis, and that's a popcorn match. Who can forget the five-set thriller they played way back in the 2003 U.S. Open semifinals, where Roddick saved a match point before he went on to win the title? Now Roddick is much higher ranked than Nalby coming into the event, but Nalbandian is still capable of playing well enough to beat just about anybody, and the strength of his return matches up well against Roddick's biggest asset, his serve. I lean towards Roddick here, but it could go either way.

In the bottom half of the draw, Viktor Troicki plays Richard Gasquet, while Novak Djokovic plays Robin Haase, who is coming back from an injury layoff. Best of luck to the young Dutch player, but his campaign ends against Djokovic, who looked awesome against Jarkko Nieminen. The other quarter is tougher to call, though. Troicki and Gasquet are both very strong players just getting into the middle stage of their careers, and while Gasuqet is trying to get back to the level he was at a few years ago, Troicki is playing some of the best he's ever played, just now starting to live up to his potential. This one could go either way.

In Valencia, there are three Spaniards left, and it's a shame that two of them have to play each other. Juan Monaco needs to follow up the biggest win he's had in a long time when he ousted Andy Murray in the second round. He'll play lucky loser Granollers, and he should get through that one. The other Spaniard, David Ferrer, gets Italian Andreas Seppi, and he should win that one with ease. The other two semis, though, are much more interesting.

Gilles Simon, who ousted Fernando Verdasco, gets another struggling top player in Nikolay Davydenko. The two have similar games, though Davydenko does a bit more heavy hitting and Simon does a bit more running, they're both brutal counterpunchers. Neither player has been at their best this year, but a good finish to this season could set the stage for a renewed campaign in 2011. I lean towards Simon based on recent form, but Davydenko is a very dangerous player. The final quarterfinal is a thriller - Gael Monfils, who is on one of the longest winning streaks of his career, gets second seed Robin Soderling after a thorough dismantling of a dangerous opponent in Stan Wawrinka. I actually lean towards Monfils pulling the upset, as he's been showing some very encouraging signs of a new level of seriousness in his approach to his tennis.

In any case, tomorrow looks to be an excellent day of tennis. I'm eager to see how it plays out.