{"id":285,"date":"2011-04-21T21:12:32","date_gmt":"2011-04-21T21:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavytopspin.com\/?p=285"},"modified":"2011-04-21T21:12:32","modified_gmt":"2011-04-21T21:12:32","slug":"thursday-topspin-capitalizing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/21\/thursday-topspin-capitalizing\/","title":{"rendered":"Thursday Topspin: Capitalizing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Open quarters: <\/em>Of the eight men left standing in Barcelona, five are seeded in the top eight. \u00a0The other three are unseeded, but only one needed to pull a major upset to get to the quarters.<\/p>\n<p>That man is <strong>Ivan Dodig<\/strong>, who took out <strong>Robin Soderling<\/strong> in the 2nd round, allowing the Swede only six games. \u00a0It&#8217;s been a breakthrough season for the Croatian, who will crack the top 50 thanks to his performance this week. \u00a0He backed up the 2nd-round win with a tough three-setter against <strong>Milos Raonic<\/strong> today. \u00a0Perhaps most impressive, he reeled off seven points in a row to win a first-set tiebreak.<\/p>\n<p>Dodig has an opportunity to go even further, as the man seeded to face him in the quarters was <strong>Tomas Berdych<\/strong>, who withdrew. \u00a0Instead, his next opponent is <strong>Feliciano Lopez<\/strong>, who defeated <strong>Kei Nishikori<\/strong> today, after upsetting <strong>Guillermo Garcia-Lopez<\/strong> yesterday. \u00a0Thus, at least one semifinalist will be unseeded.<\/p>\n<p>That man will almost certainly face <strong>Rafael Nadal<\/strong> in the semis. \u00a0Nadal, as goes without saying, breezed through his match today against <strong>Santiago Giraldo<\/strong>&#8211;if anything, it&#8217;s surprising that he failed to win 60% of total points. \u00a0Nadal&#8217;s quarterfinal opponent is <strong>Gael Monfils<\/strong>, who won in straight sets over <strong>Richard Gasquet<\/strong>&#8211;a positive result for Monfils, who just scraped by <strong>Robin Haase<\/strong> in the second round.<\/p>\n<p><em>Predictions: <\/em>There aren&#8217;t betting lines yet for all of the quarterfinals, but I have run my algorithm to get percentages for tomorrow&#8217;s four matches:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Nadal vs. Monfils<\/strong>: Oddsmakers have the Frenchman at 30-1, which seems excessive to me. \u00a0Yes, of course, Rafa is the heavy favorite, and yes, of course, Gael could self-destruct and play no better than Giraldo did today. \u00a0But on the other hand, Monfils is one of the few men with a game that <em>could<\/em>&#8211;if the stars aligned exactly right&#8211;beat Nadal on clay. \u00a0My system gives Gael a 20% chance, which as I&#8217;ve commented before, is just a reflection of how my system doesn&#8217;t know what to do with someone so surface-dominant as Nadal.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Dodig vs. Lopez: <\/strong>After beating Soderling, Dodig will no doubt gain several places in my ranking system, but that won&#8217;t happen until next Monday. \u00a0As it is now, my algorithm isn&#8217;t too impressed, especially with Dodig&#8217;s potential on clay. \u00a0It gives Feliciano a 64% chance of reaching the semis.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jurgen Melzer vs. David Ferrer: <\/strong>Even after Melzer&#8217;s impressive victory over <strong>Roger Federer<\/strong> last week, Ferrer is still the favorite here. \u00a0I have him at 60.5%, while early sportsbook odds set him at 77%.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Nicholas Almagro vs. Juan Carlos Ferrero: <\/strong>It&#8217;s nice to see Ferrero right back in the mix, even if it took some good fortune to get him there. \u00a0In fact, he just barely got by <strong>Simone Vagnozzi<\/strong> today, a result that must have Almagro licking his lips in anticipation. \u00a0Early sportsbook odds have Almagro at 78%, while my system puts him at 70%.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Streaking southpaw: <\/em><strong>Thomas Schoorel<\/strong>\u00a0isn&#8217;t letting up&#8211;after winning a title last week, he hasn&#8217;t lost a set this week, including his opening-round upset of <strong>Jeremy Chardy<\/strong>. \u00a0Tomorrow he&#8217;ll face 5th-seed <strong>Ivo Minar<\/strong>in the semis.<\/p>\n<p>Another man to watch on the challenger tour is <strong>Aljaz Bedene<\/strong>, the Slovenian who won his first title at this level three weeks ago in Barletta. \u00a0Last week he reached the semifinals in Blumenau, and he&#8217;s in another quarter in Santos, where he&#8217;ll next face 5th-seed <strong>Diego Junquiera<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>See you tomorrow!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Open quarters: Of the eight men left standing in Barcelona, five are seeded in the top eight. \u00a0The other three are unseeded, but only one needed to pull a major upset to get to the quarters. That man is Ivan Dodig, who took out Robin Soderling in the 2nd round, allowing the Swede only six &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/21\/thursday-topspin-capitalizing\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Thursday Topspin: Capitalizing<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}