Another day until the big French Open semis. Let’s make some predictions.

Nadal vs. Djokovic

Because it is the French Open, and there is a viable French player still alive in the semis, Nadal will face Djokovic in the first semifinal of the day, even though most tennis fans realize this is the de facto final.

So far, in his route to the semis, Nadal has beaten Brands, Klizan, Fognini, Nishikori, and Wawrinka.  Both Brands and Klizan gave Nadal trouble in the opening set, Brands primarily by bashing the ball, and Klizan by a combination of good hitting and Nadal’s errors.  In both matches, Nadal recovered and took the next 3 sets.

Nadal dropped two sets en route, but had a pretty easy win over Wawrinka.

Djokovic faced Goffin, Pella, Dimitrov, Kohlschreiber, and Haas.  The Dimitrov win was easier than expected, while Kohlschreiber took the only set off Djokovic.

Heading into this match, Nadal has won 6 of 8 tournaments played this year, and reached the finals of the other 2.  One of his two losses was to Djokovic in the finals of Monte Carlo when Nadal claimed he was still trying to get his game back to where it was.  At that point, Djokovic was still hitting quite well.

Since then, Nadal knows he needs to be more aggressive off the ground.  If he plays too passive, he’ll let Djokovic dictate points, and that’s tough to handle.  To that end, Nadal seems to have reached that goal.  He has been aggressive against his opponent.  Yes, he’s struggled a little in the first two rounds, but he’s had fewer problems.

On the flip side, Djokovic did serve extremely well for most of his match against Haas, but Haas nearly pushed it to a fourth set.  Djokovic is coming off the death of his first coach, Jelena Gencic, but the two hadn’t spent a tremendous amount of time with one another in some time, so he may feel the impact of this less than, say, his grandfather’s death last year.  In any case, I don’t think it’s affected his resolve to beat Nadal.

And, if there’s a man that can beat Nadal, it’s going to be Djokovic.  Right now, I think Nadal is playing better ball, and I think he’s more likely to win easily than for Djokovic to win easily, though I think they could have an epic battle instead.  It rained some in the match between Azarenka and Sharapova.  If last year’s final is any indication, cold, wet conditions would favor Djokovic.

My pick: lean slightly to Nadal

Tsonga vs. Ferrer

This semi is a huge opportunity for both players.  Tsonga has only ever reached a Slam final once, in his surprise run to the 2008 Australian Open final where he beat Nadal in the semis, but l0st to Djokovic in the finals, in Djokovic’s first Slam win.

Ferrer, for all his efforts, has generally run into a wall in the semis, whether it be Federer or Nadal or Djok0vic or Murray.  He’s reached 3 (almost) consecutive Slam semi (last year’s French and US Open and this year’s Australian Open).  He’s been to two other Slam semi, but has never managed the last hurdle.

This time around will be his best opportunity.  He has a 2-1 head-to-head over Tsonga, though that’s a bit too few results to compare.  Many people are rooting for Tsonga because he hits harder, and many feel he has the best chance to beat either Nadal or Djokovic (at least, compared to Ferrer).

Generally, Ferrer does well against hard hitters provided they aren’t also fast.  Ferrer has actually struggled more against Gael Monfils whose speed and steadiness makes him tougher for Ferrer to handle rather than the harder hitting Tsonga.  If Ferrer has a weakness, it’s that he can be overpowered, but it’s tough to do.  You need speed, and Tsonga is pretty fast, which is important.  Ferrer is also an exceptional returner which explains his results against some of the best servers in the game (Raonic, Anderson, Isner, Querrey, Berdych, del Potro).

The thing is Ferrer generally beats players that many expect would over power him (Almagro, for example).  Still, with the French crowd behind him, I think Tsonga may be ready to take this match, so against my better instinct, I’m calling this match for Tsonga.