Monday, July 28, 2008

Cincinnati draw

The new Cincinnati draw is out and it looks pretty favorable for the defending champion Roger Federer. Like all of the top eight players Fed, has a bye for the first round. His second round opponent will be either Roby Ginepri or Jonas Bjorkman (neither of whom have beaten Federer before.) In the third round it will most likely be Mario Ancic, followed potentially by Roddick and Murray may be his semi-final opponent. Murray, is by far the most dangerous of all of these guys but I'd still have to say that Federer will be in the finals this time.

Nadal's draw isn't too bad either. Marin Cilic, Mikhail Youzhny, Fernando Verdasco, and David Ferrer have all landed in his part of the draw. Youzhny, in my mind would be the most likely of them to cause the upset but if Nadal gets into the semi-finals he's going to have to play Djokovic and I think that's where things will really get interesting. Djokovic, has a pretty good draw to the semis. Berdych, Gonzalez, and Blake are the seeded players in his part of the draw although I could see Gulbis scoring an upset win over Djokovic. Gilles Simon, may have done well in the past two tournaments but this draw isn't giving him any favors. Nicolas Kiefer, who beat him in three close sets last Saturday will be his first opponent. Now Kiefer, is probably burned out from his match against Nadal yesterday so this will be a winnable match for Gilles, however if he makes it through he'll have to play Blake and that's not a good match up for Simon.

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