Wawrinka Scrapes through against Tursonov, Sousa Upsets Ferrer

Well the remaining action of today made for some good tennis and one big upset. That was the #1 seed Ferrer losing in Kuala Lumpur 6-2, 7-6(6) to 77th ranked Joao Sousa from Portugal. Sousa is basically a challenger tour player who has been having some good results since the US Open where he defeated Dimitrov and Nieminen over 5 sets in the first two rounds. Last week he made semis in St. Petersburg as well, and now he is in the semis of Kuala Lumpur again.

Pretty exciting stuff. We don't hear much from Portuguese players. The one that comes to mind is Frederico Gil, but we haven't seen a Portuguese player who has really been competitive at the very top of the game. Not that I know of anyway. Maybe Sousa can do something. He now plays Melzer and has a real chance to make his first ATP main tour final. In the other semi Wawrinka will play Benneteau after he had a very close call against Tursonov.

Stan lost the first set 6-2 after getting close to getting breadsticked. He immediately broke in the 2nd set though and held on to square things at a set all. The 3rd set went down to the wire and he came out the winner 7-3 in the breaker. For a minute there after the 1st set I thought the old Stan was back. But the fact that he came back to win this against a difficult opponent shows me Stan 2.0 is alive and well. Tusonov is currently ranked 34th and no push over.

The head-to-head between Stan and Benneteau is 1-1. It should be a competitive match. In Bangkok Raonic and Gasquet joined Berdych and Simon in the semi-finals. Raonic just defeated Lopez 6-4, 6-3 in an impressive serving display making 86% first serves. With his massive serve you better believe he is gonna be very hard to beat when he makes that many first serves. The match between Gasquet and Youzhny went to 3 sets as I expected with Gasquet prevailing 5-7, 6-3, 6-1.

Pretty impressive stuff from Gasquet after dropping the first set. He has always been a great talent and many expected him to be the next Federer, just like many are now expecting something similar from Dimitrov. Lets face it though; there will never be a next Federer. But it is nice to see Gasquet finally starting to fulfill some more of the vast potential he always had. The semi-final between him and Raonic should be very interesting indeed, as should the one between Berdych and Simon.

Gasquet and Raonic is tied at 1-1 after their 5 set US Open marathon, while Simon seems to be a difficult opponent for Berdych because Simon leads the head-to-head 5-2. Berdych is a player who likes pace and Simon doesn't give much pace. Simon is also good at absorbing pace and uses variations of pace to mess with the rhythm of his opponents. I would imagine those are the reasons Berdych has trouble with him. Lets see if the trend continues tomorrow!