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  • Open 13 Preview: Bottom Half of the Draw

    2/11/08 8:42 AM | Ricky Dimon
    - After a week without any top-level tournaments due to the opening round of the 2008 Davis Cup, the ATP Tour is back with a bang this week and the marquee event takes place in Marseille, France.

    The bottom half of the Open 13 draw is especially enticing, headlined by Richard Gasquet, Marcos Baghdatis, Mikhail Youzhny, and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

    This week’s Open 13 in Marseille is by no means a Grand Slam tournament. In fact it’s only an International Series event with a draw of 32 players. But just take a quick look at the participants and it’s easy to see this is a can’t-miss tournament for tennis fans.

    While the whole draw is jam-packed with big names, the bottom half is loaded with players who are at their very best level right now. The tournament’s second seed, Richard Gasquet, is the highest-seeded man in the bottom section, but he has plenty of company—in fact a lot more than he would want—close by.

    Third-seeded Mikhail Youzhny is a potential semi-final opponent for Gasquet, although both men have tons of work to do before reaching that point. Youzhny will have a hard time just getting out of the first round, as he has to face up-and-coming Croat Marin Cilic, who took out Fernando Gonzalez at the Australian Open en route to a fourth-round appearance. If the Russian is lucky enough to make it to the quarterfinals, he will have to face either sixth-seeded Marcos Baghdatis, Arnaud Clement, Feliciano Lopez, or huge-serving Ivo Karlovic. That’s a brutal eighth of the draw right there and whoever comes through it to the quarterfinals will be a threat to keep going into the semis or even the final.

    If Youzhny’s section of the draw is difficult, Gasquet’s is nothing short of taxing. The Frenchman should be able to get past Italian Simone Bolelli in the first round, but then he will most likely take on Jarkko Nieminen in the second. Nieminen recently made it all the way to the quarterfinals of the Australian Open. While that eighth of the draw is at the very least interesting, tennis fans already have to be looking ahead to Gasquet’s potential third-round matchup. Why? Because that’s where Gasquet and compatriot Jo-Wilfried Tsonga would meet. Tsonga, of course, was the surprise runner-up in Australian, and Gasquet was one of his upset victims. Tsonga took him out in the fourth round in a fourth-set tiebreaker.

    A few question marks lurk in the bottom half of the draw, as well. Tsonga has to deal with the always-dangerous Mario Ancic in the first round. Ancic has been out this season with an injury so Tsonga should be able to take advantage of the Croat’s rust and advance, but Ancic has a huge serve and could give the Frenchman problems even if he is not 100 percent. Robin Soderling has also been absent so far in 2008 and his first match of the year will not be an easy one against Nieminen. The Finn is not an ideal matchup for Soderling in his first match back, because Nieminen keeps balls in play, gets everything back, and is willing to stay out on the court all day long.

    While Tsonga has to be considered the favorite—albeit a small favorite—to reach the final simply due to his current form, this section looks like a free-for-all. It would not be much of a surprise to see Gasquet, Youzhny, Baghdatis, or even Karlovic emerge unscathed from the fracas that is the bottom half of the Open 13 draw.

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