The tennis season is now picking up steam again. ATP has two 500s going on right now – one in Beijing, the other in Tokyo. A host of the big names in tennis are in China, this week in Beijing and next week in Shanghai.
Let us take a look at the Quarter-Finals lined up on both the men’s and women’s side.
WTA
Serena Williams Vs Caroline Wozniacki
Serena is not as dominant as she was a few weeks ago at the US Open, but she should still get a win here. Wozniacki will have to play her very best to even get 1 set.
Serena in 2.
Petra Kvitova vs Na Li
Kvitova, one of my favourite ball strikers in tennis seems to be in a bad habit – needing a 3rd set to pull off wins. She may not want to tempt the tennis Gods with another deciding set. I will go with the home-favorite, Na Li.
Na Li in 3 sets.
Agnieszka Radwanska vs Angelique Kerber
This is my pick for the match of the day. Kerber’s sensational shot-maing against Radwanska’s variety. Kerber’s aggressive game against Radwanska’s crafty and defensive game. I will take Radwanska in THE MATCH of the day,
Radwanska in 3 sets.
Jelena Jankovic vs Lucie Safarova
Jankovic has the game to make a deep run to the title. With one the sweetest double hand back-hands, hard to against JJ. Safarova is playing some good ball and can definitely take out JJ, but I am going JJ.
Jankovic in 2 sets.
ATP
Fabio Fognini vs Rafael Nadal
I had picked Haas to make it to quarterfinals, but Hewitt beat Haas and Fognini them hammered Hewitt. Nadal is continuing his winning streak, 18 matches in a row now. Expect him to make it 19, but Fognini can give Nadal some trouble.
Nadal in 3
Sam Querrey vs Novak Djokovic
Querrey is making the best of some of the fastest conditions on the ATP tour and put together a few big wins. Djokovic had to work doubly hard against Verdasco, but prevailed in 3. I expect him to clean up his act and clean up Sam in 2.
Djokovic in 2
David Ferrer vs Richard Gasquet
This is THE MATCH of THE DAY! It is a re-match of their US Open Quarter-final, which was a cracking 5 setter that Gasquet won. Should Gasquet bring that kind of form, he should prevail. Ferrer will not give an inch and as he always does, will fight till the umpire calls is “Game Set and Match”. This is a toss-up but I will go with Gasquet.
Gasquet in 3.
“Big John” Isner vs Tomas Berdych
A real battle of big servers, something that is a rarity in quaterfinals in this era if slower courts. I had picked Berdych in my pre-tournament preview and I will go with him.
Berdych in 3
Enjoy Tennis and Life, folks!
SportzCosmos 
Fognini was smoking it….
Whoa, Fogs was smoking Nadal at a bonfire, and then …. Nadal decided to return the favor to Fogs. Rafa is showing his usual nerves of steel MO.
Great stuff. You got 3 out of the 4 predictions on women’s side and 4/4 in men’s.
“I expect him to clean up his act and clean up Sam in 2.”
Djokovic cleaned up Querrey for sure! Respect for Novak from a Rafa fan!
Novak is looking lethal right now. I have no clue on to how will Rafa beat him if they both reach the Final. Nice predictions BTW!
Thanks Carlos! I agree with you regarding Novak and Rafa. Then again, I thought the same about Novak being unbeatable and look what happened? Rafa has bigger issues though. This fall season fast courts are his absolute nemesis! His record is actually as bad as Sampras was on clay. Relatively speaking ofcourse. No GOAT contender can be BAD on any surface,
I will concede your point. Nadal needs to correct his indoor issues. But at the same time, in the minds of most people, they will only look into the other surfaces, since indoors doesn’t have a slam. Shouldn’t be that way but that how it will be. But I think that Rafa has a very good chance of running the table if he can beat Nole in the final here. That would give him a TON of confidence moving forward. We shall see.
Fair enough. Think about it this way…… Federer/Sampras and Laver have multiple year end championships – 6, 5 and 3 [not sure on Laver’s have to confirm]. It is the only tournament where you have to play 5 top 10 players in a week. There is a good reason ATP awards 1500 points for it. Definitely, it is the next in line after slams, yes?
It might be, but the problem is that you are putting the best 8 players of the world into a “championship” basically, but playing always in 1 surface. These 8 players got there by playing on all surfaces so it is a bit unfair for players like Rafa that dont play well indoors to be punished for not winning it. If this championship would have been on clay, Rafa would have a million of them. So this tournament only really measures who is the best of the 8 in indoors. Now, if you rotate surfaces, the results would have more meaning to me. But that would be a bit hard to do considering the climate at that time of the year and having only 1 venue for multiple surfaces would also be hard. Nonetheless, the fact that Fed has won it 6 times still is a very important achievement and worthy to bring up in this discussion. However, i don’t think this is a mayor factor as a plus for Federer in the GOAT debate. There are other achievements to me that are much more meaningful than YEC that in my opinion still puts Federer ahead for now as GOAT.
“These 8 players got there by playing on all surfaces so it is a bit unfair for players like Rafa that dont play well indoors to be punished for not winning it.”
That is the point though, instead of having a 5th slam, they have the indoor season culminating in a finale.
I do agree that there should be a rotation of surfaces. That does sound like an idea ATP should look into.
My picks for today:
Serena and Kvitova to win in 3 sets. Same for Rafa and 2 sets for Djokovic and Delpotro. Raonic already won in 2.
Shanghai draw is out and Federer and Djokovic are in the same quarter! Just what the doctor did NOT order for Djokovic who is already way behind Nadal in the atp race. I did not look at the numbers yet, but don’t be surprised if Rafa locks year end no.1 should he win Shanghai. Will he? wait for my preview…..
Looks like Rafa vs Nole for the final. Happy that Rafa went back to number 1! 🙂 I really would like to see Aggi give Serena a good battle, perhaps upset her. Also, are you watching DelPo vs Almagro!?! Such high quality stuff!
Congrats Carlos! Happy for fair Rafa fans like yourself, our co-founder Raghu, Kimberly, Vinod, Alison on tennis-x.
Delpotro Vs Almagro is off the charts! Super terrific tennis! This is the kind of tennis, I love. Aggressive and action-packed like Chris Nolan’s movies 🙂
“Looks like Rafa vs Nole for the final. Happy that Rafa went back to number 1!”
Carlos, great to see another Rafa fan on this site. Congrats on Rafa regainting the number 1 rank. Let us hope he will extend his ranking by winning the title tomorrow.
Vamos!
Djokovic in early trouble. Gasquet has come to play. A break up on Novak
Very impressed with Gasquet’s efforts so far. saved all 5 break points. Nole is NOT playing like GODKOVIC! Just in case anyone is wondering.
LOL! Just like that Nole breaks and makes it 3-3. Welcome to Gasquet Planet!
Scary stuff from Novak! Will be a minor miracle if Rafa wins a set tomorrow.