Three seeds are among eight players vying for semifinal berths on Friday at the Chennai Open, including top seed Rafael Nadal.
Third seed Carlos Moya plays the first match on Centre Court against unseeded Florent Serra. Moya has been one of the most successful players at this event, improving his career record here to 20-3 with his two victories this week and now reaching the quarterfinals or better in all six of his appearances. And he has been impressive at this stage of the tournament in the past, going 4-1 in his five previous quarterfinals (he has gone on to win the title twice, finish runner-up once and has fallen in the semifinals once and in the quarterfinals once). Serra, who is making his career debut here, can draw confidence from some big wins during the 2007 season, notching Top 10 wins over James Blake and Nikolay Davydenko, though he was 0-5 against Top 20 foes the rest of the year.
Top seed and tournament favorite Rafael Nadal is up next, taking on Guillermo Garcia-Lopez. Nadal is trying to win an ATP title during the pre-Australian Open season for the first time, his best results prior to this year being a runner-up finish at Auckland in 2004 and a semifinal finish here a year ago. He is looking on track to pull off the feat, dropping the fewest games of all of the eight quarterfinalists so far (losing nine games; Robin Haase is next with 13). Garcia-Lopez did reach the semis here before (in 2005) and has had success against the Top 10 (going 1-9, defeating Andre Agassi in 2006) but Nadal has been terrific against lower-ranked players recently, including a 30-2 mark against non-Top 50 players since the beginning of 2007 (losing twice last year, to a No. 106- ranked Nicolas Mahut at Queen’s Club and retiring against No. 107 Chris Guccione at Sydney).
Fourth seed Mikhail Youzhny will try to stop Xavier Malisse’s perfect run here in the next match. Youzhny had one of his best years so far in 2007, cracking the Top 10 for the first time (spending a single week at No. 10 before dipping out again) and finishing Top 20 for the first time in three years. He also won 50 matches (the first time he has done that in a single season) and collected his third career ATP singles title at Rotterdam. By making the quarters here he has already outdone his best previous performance, a second round finish in his only previous attempt in 2001. But next he will come up against two streaks - a three-match losing streak to Malisse (he is 1-3 overall against him) and the Belgian’s perfect 7-0 record at this event, which has brought him the 2007 title (dropping only one set in five matches) and his current quarterfinal berth (he hasn’t dropped a set so far).
The only quarterfinal match between unseeded players, Robin Haase against Marin Cilic, is next. Haase has been to this stage of an ATP event just once before, reaching the Amersfoort semifinals last summer; Cilic is playing his fifth career ATP quarterfinal, already notching two semifinal finishes (2006 Gstaad, 2007 St. Petersburg) and two quarterfinal runs (2007 Queen’s Club, 2007 Beijing). Both have taken out seeds to get to this stage (Haase beating No. 2 seed Marcos Baghdatis and Cilic beating No. 5 seed Nicolas Mahut) and both are looking to reach their first ever ATP final.
