Bernard Tomic almost didn’t get out of the first round, facing one of last year’s new upstart, Martin Klizan, but he managed a third set win.  He had a comfortable win against Somdev Devvarman in the second round.  But his big challenge was the top-ranked Frenchman, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

Last year, Tomic showed a great deal of finesse in his play.  His superb Australian Open lead him to a bit of laziness with indifferent results this year.  This year, Tomic is working hard to stay competitive.

Despite a loss, Tomic fought hard in this match.  The first two sets were decided by a break with Tomic taking the first set and Tsonga taking the second.  The third set really favored Tsonga who held his serve a lot more easily than the Australian.  The 3-all game, in particular, which seemed favored for Tomic to hold easily with a 40-15 lead went over 12 minutes with Tomic in danger of losing serve, but managing to get out of messes he was creating for himself, finally held.

Once the match went to tiebreak, Tomic actually had the advantage, with a 6-4 lead in the tiebreak.  He would go on to have 5 match points before Tsonga finally got a 10-9 lead, then sealed match point with an ace at 11-10.

Although Tomic lost, he’s starting to do reasonably well holding his own against a power player like Tsonga.  He’s avoiding true finesse, and going toe to toe with the power game, mostly with his excellent ability to redirect shots.

In another intriguing match at Marseille, Tomas Berdych faced Polish upstart, Jerzy Janowicz.  Janowicz came out of nowhere to reach the finals of Paris Indoors last year.  Since then, he’s done well enough to justify his mid 20’s ranking typically winning a match or two per tournament.   Berdych won sets 1 and 3 comfortable while Janowicz took the second set in a tiebreak.

Dimitry Tursunov is a name from the past (much like Paul-Henri Mathieu).  A former top-20 player, Tursunov has mostly been missing the last few years.  Tursunov beat another of those players of the past, Gilles Muller, who once beat Roddick at the US Open.  Tursunov also upset Tipsarevic in the second round to reach this point.  He faces Berdych in one of the semis.

del Potro shows he still has trouble beating steady players.  Last year, del Potro would have had a great year if he didn’t keep running into two top players: Roger Federer and David Ferrer.  He must have lost to them nearly 10 times between the two of them.  Although del Potro has had better luck against Gilles Simon, Simon has been able to beat del Potro by outsteadying the tall Argentine.  del Potro has changed his game so he’s not so fiercely powerful as he once was, and relies on steadiness more.  For a guy who doesn’t hit much topspin, Simon gets a lot of balls back and does well hitting a hard flat shot.

Simon will face his countryman, Tsonga, in the other semifinals.  Tsonga will be favored, but Simon has been playing good consistent ball this year.

Memphis

This tournament might be Jack Sock’s coming out party.  Sock upset Milos Raonic, who just came off winning Rotterdam, in the opening round.  Sock continued to win by beating fellow American, James Blake, in the secound round.  However, he didn’t have enough to bother Feliciano Lopez, despite having a break in the second set.

Memphis has had its draw decimated.  Raonic, the top seed, in the first round.  John Isner, the third seed, lost to Istomin in the first round.  Top seed, Marin Cilic, did a little better, reaching the quarterfinals before losing to Kei Nishikori, the fifth seed.

Matosevic, the relatively unknown Australian, has been having a good tournament.  He beat Sam Querrey in the second round, then beat 7th seed, Alexandr Dolgopolov in the quarterfinals.  He’ll meet Nishikori in the semifinals.

Buenos Aires

This is the third week of the “golden swing” which is a series of four clay court events played in South and Central America.  This is also a week that Nadal is skipping to rest and train for the last week in Acapulco.

Historically, players like Almagro and Ferrer have played more weeks, but Ferrer has decided to start in Buenos Aires.  Ferrer, now ranked 4th in the world, is the steadiest player not in the “big 4”.  He faced Nalbandian in the second round and lost a set, but still won comfortably, then crushed Fognini in the quarterfinals, 62 61.

He’ll face Tommy Robredo who hasn’t played well in years.  Robredo has pretty much played unknowns to reach the semifinals and will be a heavy underdog to Ferrer.

Wawrinka, who is generally considered more comfortable on clay, despite his success in Australia and his tough losses in Davis Cup (which were on hard courts) has come back to his winning ways and is in the semifinals.  He beat Spaniard, Albert Ramos, to reach the semis and will face another Spaniard in Nicolas Almagro next.  This will be the battle of the one-handed backhands.