AO Crisis Center Day 10

By Rosangel Valenti, TennisWorld Contributing Editor

Evening. Today, we're about to witness the second lot of men's and women's quarterfinals, after a day of upsets yesterday, especially on the women's side. Please use this thread for the usual prognostications, perorations, panics, prayers, paeans and postmortems.

First up on Rod Laver Arena, the number 9 seed, Daniela Hantuchova, faces Agnieszka Radwanska, seeded 29. Radwanska has shown some form here, first defeating the number two seed, Svetlana Kuznetsova, in the third round, and going on to eliminate the number 14 seed, Nadia Petrova, in an impressive comeback over three sets in the fourth round. This time, she backed up her big win. When we last saw her in a Slam, the 2007 US Open, she took out the defending champion, Maria Sharapova in the third round, but couldn't progress further in the draw. Meanwhile, this is Hantuchova's fourth Slam quarterfinal (the last one was at the 2003 Australian Open), and Radwanska's first. Neither woman has ever reached a Slam semfinal. Will the new girl on the block come through, or the somewhat resurgent Hantuchova, whose major Slam successes to date have mainly been in mixed doubles (in which she is the proud owner of a career Grand Slam)?

The second singles match of the day is Venus Williams against Ana Ivanovic. Williams has won all four of their career meetings to date, the last occurring in the fouth round of last year's US Open.  Ivanovic has yet to take a set from Williams.

The first men's match, immediately following, is the number three seed Novak Djokovic against number five David Ferrer (aka Snoo's Ferru). If Ferrer is the victor, he will displace Nikolay Davydenko as world number four, and reach his second Slam semifinal in a row. If Djokovic wins, he will have reached at least the semifinals of all four Slams during a twelve-month stretch. At last year's US Open, Djokovic took care of Ferrer in straight sets to reach the final, but when they met in Shanghai, Ferrer displayed sparkling form, and beat Djokovic in straight sets. In fact, their overall head-to-head is 3-2 in Ferrer's favour, although Ferrer's other two wins came on clay, while Djokovic's was on a hard court (Indian Wells last year).

In the last singles match of the day, first in the evening session, TMF plays James Blake. Blake and Federer met once before in a Slam quarterfinal, and that was the night when Blake took his only set so far from the defending champion (then and now) - during the US Open of 2006. Just to rub it in, that set was a tiebreak. Their head-to-head currently stands at 7-0, and when they last met, in the Cincinnati final last year, Federer won with some ease, 6-1, 6-4. Both men survived tough five-setters this week in the third round (the photo above was taken immediately after Federer emerged the victor in his toe-to-toe encounter with Janko Tipsarevic), and Blake even managed to come back from two sets down for the first time in his career, to win against Sebastien Grosjean, before straight-seting teenager Marin Cilic in the fourth round. This could be an interesting test for both men.

Before signing off, I thought I'd follow up on Andrew's post of the other evening mentioning KADs by asking a couple of questions of my own:

First: do devoted fans like to be referred to as KADs, or do people feel that the term still has negative connotations? If not a KAD, what would you prefer to be called?

Second: what, if anything, would it take for a KAD to stop being a devoted fan of their chosen one(s)?

As always, I hope that everyone has a great day of tennis-watching. May all our favourites perform to the best of their abilities for our delectation.