Some early round news before we head to today’s quarterfinals.

Many of last week’s players that did well in Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok faded this week showing how hard it is for players outside the top few to maintain levels of excellence from week to week.  Often, a player ranked in the teens who wins a tournament one week loses early the next.

Richard Gasquet, who won Bangkok, lost in the second round to Zhang Ze whose ranking is in the mid 100s and only got into the draw by being a wildcard and the draw somehow magically put two Chinese wildcards in the opening round so at least one was guaranteed to reach the second round.  Gilles Simon, who reached the finals of Bangkok against Gasquet, found himself on the losing end against Janko Tipsarevic who he beat back in the Bangkok semis.

Juan Monaco, who won Kuala Lumpur, lost to Baghdatis in the second round.  Julien Benneteau, who was the finalist, lost in the opening round to Andreas Seppi and retired.

Brian Baker found himself a loser in the opening round at Beijing, losing to Kevin Anderson.

Now to today’s quarterfinals.  First, Tokyo.  Kei Nishikori is Japan’s highest ranked singles player, and he was looking to make it deep into his home country’s tournament.  To do so, he had to topple the always dangerous Tomas Berdych.  He did this in straight sets: 75 64.  Marcos Baghdatis had the easiest quarterfinal of the day beating Dmitry Tursunov 2 and 4.  Andy Murray had two 62 sets, but still was pushed to 3 sets by Stan Wawrinka.  Milos Raonic upset Janko Tipsarevic in a match that featured two tiebreak sets.  Murray plays Raonic in one semi while Nishikori plays Tursunov in the other.

In Beijing, Djokovic strolled to an easy straight set win over Carlos Berlocq.  He will face Florian Mayer who beat Zhang Ze in straight sets.  Tsonga won his match over Youzhny in rather handy fashion and will face Feliciano Lopez who needed 3 sets to beat Sam Querrey.