Hamburg Crisis Center, Day 6

By Rosangel Valenti, TW Contributing Editor

Good morning. Please use this post for discussing the day's tennis - either the ATP tournament in Hamburg, or the WTA event taking place in Rome. I will be in Hamburg today, watching nervously.

I have now finished uploading the web galleries resulting from Wednesday's visit to Hamburg. The gallery for the "other players" was linked to in yesterday's Crisis Center; here are links for pictures of Federer and Nadal.

Match Choice:

While there are many in the Tribe who recall that Federer's only previous encounter with Andreas Seppi (in Monte Carlo last year) went to two tiebreak sets before the world number one prevailed, the big match of the day surely must be the encounter between the current world numbers two and three, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. On Monday, they may have swapped ranking places, if Djokovic can rise to the occasion and beat Nadal on clay. He's the best player of 2008 so far, on results, but his three wins against Nadal have all been on North American hardcourts. Nadal has won their three previous encounters on clay without dropping a set, and looked imperious in dismissing his mentor Carlos Moya last night.

Overall the head-to-head between the two stands at 6-3 in Nadal's favour, all of the matches having taken place in the past two years - quite a meaty current rivalry. Djokovic beat Nadal 6-3, 6-2 the last time they met, in Indian Wells this year, but the Spaniard seems to relish taking his revenge during the clay season. Despite his injury-hampered loss to Juan Carlos Ferrero in Rome last week, after which Djokovic went on to take the title that he had previously owned, I believe Nadal enters the match as the favourite.

Player of the Day:

Andreas Seppi, now into his first Masters Series semifinal. He overcame the disappointment of serving for the match in the second set against Nicolas Kiefer and being broken, with Kiefer going on to take the set after holding and breaking again. Then he went a break down in the decider (at which point it looked as though he would repeat his collapse in the final set in Rome against James Blake), managed to stave off a second break, and finally broke Kiefer when the German served for the match, and again, with some aggressive returns, when Kiefer served to try to take the match into  a final-set tiebreak.

Weather Report:

A mixture of cloudy spells and sun is forecast, in both Hamburg and Rome. At the moment, Sunday in Hamburg is expected to be warm and sunny.

As always, enjoy today's tennis.