In Montreal on Friday at the Rogers Cup, World #1 Roger Federer, World #2 Rafael Nadal and World #4 Novak Djokovic all lost their quarterfinal matches (which for the first time in ATP history had featured all of the world's Top 8 players), to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Juan Martin del Potro and Andy Roddick, respectively.
The most shocking result was the first, which was Federer's loss 6-7(5) 6-1 6-7(3) despite having a 5-1 lead in the third set! In fact, after Tsonga fell on his right arm doing a winning stab volley on set point in the first set, Federer won 11 of 13 games and the commentators (Brad Gilbert, Darren Cahill and Chris Fowler) were discussing the seemingly imminent Federer-Murray semifinal. Then suddenly, Tsonga woke up and started blasting the ball and participating in relatively long rallies. Federer could not BUY a first serve for the last 30 minutes of the match, and Tsonga started serving much better. Tsonga won 5 games in a row, and Federer actually saved three match points at 5-6,0-40 to force the tiebreaker and then still couldn't get a first serve in and double faulted on match point.
I didn't see Roddick defeat Djokovic but I did see Juan Martin del Potro demolish Rafael Nadal. The Argentine is now being described at "over 6 feet, 6 inches tall." The first set was relatively close, with del Potro not playing well on the big points, but managing to snatch the first set depite being down 1-4 and 2-5 in the tiebreak.
Today's semifinals will feature Murray versus Tsonga and Roddick versus del Potro.
MadProfessah's predictions: Murray in 2 sets, del Potro in 3.
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