Just returned from Roland Garros, where I witnessed two less than exciting quarterfinal matchups. Both Djokavic and Nadal won in straight sets, making things look very easy against Andreev and Moya, respectively. So, after 10 days of action, both the Men’s and Women’s semis are set. On the Women’s side, 1st seeded Justine Henin will take on 4th seed Jelena Jankovic, and 2nd seed Sharapova will square off against 7th seeded Ana Ivanovic of Serbia, making her first semifinal appearance in a Grand Slam. Those two matches will take place tomorrow, and while I’m hopeful that both lower seeded players will win, I fear that may not actually take place. That being said, I am picking Henin over Jankovic, and will pick an upset by taking Ivanovic over Sharapova.

Over on the Men’s side, Federer will take on 4th seeded Davydenko, and Nadal will face Djokavic, who is the 5th seed. So after all my talk about the great depth of Men’s tennis, at the end of the day 4 of the top 5 players in the world are in the Semi’s. Although I still stand by the argument I made in my last post. I think both Federer and Nadal will be challenged a great deal in their matches, but I just can’t see either of them losing, and I think after the clay has settled on Friday evening, we will be awaiting another Federer vs. Nadal final. If I had to pick against one of them in the semi’s, I think Nadal has the tougher matchup, as Djokavic has played as well as anyone else these past 10 days. As for the doubles, I have not been able to watch too much over the past few days, but the top two seeds on both the Men’s and Women’s side have fallen (the Bryan bros and Bjorkman/Miryni for the men; Raymond/Stosur and Black/Huber for the women).

As for citizens of the great United States, we have one lone competitor left. Kellen Damico of Denver, CO, seeded 10th in the Boys upset the # 6 seed today, 7-6, 6-4, as e made his way the quarterfinals. He is also the 2nd seed in the doubles, teaming with Frenchman Jonathon Eysseric, where they are also in the quarters. Hopefully Kellen can bring back some hardware and gain back some pride for our clay starved country. That’s it for today, off to a final Welcome Dinner for our last group of travelers.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 10:30 am and is filed under Grand Slam General Questions, Roland Garros: Travel Questions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.