Friday, August 20, 2010

Top Four into Cincy Quarterfinals

With the last Grand Slam tournament a mere few days away, the top players are in Cincinnati this week to get some rust out.


Top seed Rafael Nadal got through his first match against Taylor Dent easily enough, but struggled mightily against Julien Benneteau. Nadal lost the first set and saved a match point in the second before finally finding his footing in the third. He faces Marcos Baghdatis next after the Cypriot defeated Wimbledon finalist Tomas Berdych.

Second seed Novak Djokovic has yet to lose a set winning easily against Victor Troiki and then beating David Nalbandian in a tight second set tiebreak. Djokovic will face a recovering Andy Roddick who had to work hard playing eight sets of tennis including four tiebreaks, two of them against Robin Soderling who the American defeated in an epic match. Roddick lead the H2H against Djokovic and has won their last three matches.

Defending champion and third seed Roger Federer has not even completed a single set this tournament and yet he's through to the quarterfinals. He won his first match against Denis Istomin when Istomin had to retire down 2-5 in the first set. In his next match, his opponent Philip Kohlschreiber withdrew even before both men stepped on the court. Federer next faces Nikolay Davydenko. Davydenko started off the year hot, but he has since cooled off with injuries post-Australian Open which is when both of these guys last met each other.

Finally, recent Rogers Cup champion Andy Murray is feeling the heat. His first two matches against Jeremy Chardy and Ernest Gulbis went the distance and he looked rusty in both of them. Can he recover just in time for his next match with Mardy Fish? Their H2H is tied at 3-3, but Fish is 2-0 against Murray this year.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for reading. Feel free to drop me a line. Instead of being Anonymous though, pick a name. Any name would do. Thanks again!