David Ferrer isn’t number 6 in the world for nothing.  He can play clay.  He can play hard courts.  One might argue his hard court results are better than his clay results.

Mardy Fish was hoping to beat Ferrer as he did earlier in the year in Miami which he did relatively easily. It would

He did keep the match pretty close against Ferrer, falling a break late in the first set, then losing in a tiebreak in the second set.  He did manage a break in the third set to push it to a fourth set, but then got broken early.  He did get the break back before being broken again.  But he played an aggressive game to break.

The fourth set tiebreak was close, but the one shot that gave Mardy issues all day was his forehand.  He had trouble being aggressive on it, and kept skying the ball or hitting it wide.  He played relatively passive hoping for Ferrer errors (which did come).  His serve bailed him out of a few games, and he did recover from a 0-40 game.

In the end, the fourth set was decided on two shots.  One was a return of serve that Ferrer hit very deep and Fish wasn’t able to handle.  He got a mini-break there.  Ferrer and Fish then played a very long point at match point, and Ferrer hit a hard shot to Fish’s forehand which he lifted high and wide to give Spain the match and the tie.

Spain will play France in the semifinals in Spain, so most likely, they will play the match on clay though France is relatively adept on clay.  Despite the French Open being played in France, the French generally play better on hard courts.  Clearly, they can play on clay as well, but the Spaniards are better.  Still, Spain will likely need Rafa to win because Tsonga and Monfils are so athletic that they could give players other than Ferrer trouble.  I don’t know that Tsonga and Monfils have ever been healthy enough to play at the same time.  Monfils generally carries the Davis Cup duties.  Gasquet may be improving well enough to keep it interesting.