The quarterfinal matches for the top portion of the men’s draw were begun today, and all of the women’s were concluded at the French Open, and things pretty much went according to plan. That frisky, anything-can-happen feeling that often pervades the first week of a Grand Slam has vanished for good; now the people who should be moving along toward the semis are moving.

Roger Federer continues his ever so fluid run through the draw. Mario Ancic hung with him for a while in the first set, but then Roger left him in the dust, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4. What can we say about him at this point? We run out of superlatives. It seems clear he will uphold his end of the deal and make it into the final. Barring of course any bouts of food poisoning or rolling his ankle on the way to get a haircut. David Nalbandian will be his opponent, and while he has been tricky for Roger in the past, I think their semifinal match-up will present little trouble for Federer this time. He is just playing too good. If anything, he could have practiced some of the shots he will use against Nadal in a final in his match today against Ancic. More serve and volley practice, for instance. Working on his attacking game.

Nalbandian would be lucky to get a set off of him. The Argentine had relatively little trouble with Number Six seed Nikolay Davydenko today, who managed to take one set off Nalbandian, the final score 6-3, 6-3, 2-6, 6-4.

Tomorrow, I get to see if my Fantasy pick of Ivan Ljubicic continues to be a good one. Ivan’s part of the draw opened up some good opportunities, and he has made the most of them. For some reason people feel he can’t play on clay. He certainly feels he can, although he went out early in Hamburg and Rome. This was actually a blessing in disguise according to “Lube,” my nickname for him, as it gave him time to arrive early in Paris and train and work on his fitness.

“I think I deserve this place,” he says. I think you do too.

His rather smooth draw continues Wednesday with Julian Benneteau, who is going to have his hands full even before he gets out on court against the tall Croat. Benneteau is that unluckiest of creatures, the last Frenchman remaining in the draw. Their expectations alone will probably drive the poor man into the red clay, no matter what else Ljubicic does to him. It might take him probably four sets.

Nadal will face teenager Novak Djokovic tomorrow in the other men’s quarterfinal. A number of people like the upcoming Djokovic’s game; frankly I feel I need to see more. His game looks solid, but not exactly spectacular. He looks no better nor worse than a handful of other clay court players. I don’t know what secret shots he has to bother Nadal with, assuming he has one. If he can compete well on this increasingly grander stage now, that should be a good enough haul for him out of this tournament.

The women’s draw is finally starting to settle down into a few predictable faces. Dinara Safina’s earlier stunning comeback against Sharapova went down the tubes today, as she herself bombed out in losing to Svetlana Kuznetsova. What will she take out of this tournament, I wonder? On the one hand she fought back from 5-1 down against Sharapova in the final set to win, but today she found herself in the same boat but on the opposite end. She was leading Kuzie 5-1, and just couldn’t close the deal in the first set. Apparently, she made little attempt to take home something good in the second set. A bagel job. Ouch! Can’t make for a good flight home though. Maybe her brother can offer some words of encouragement; he’s been in this boat often enough himself, so maybe some brotherly support would be in order.

It’s like they say about a service break: it’s not a real break until you consolidate it by holding your next service game. For Dinara, it’s not a real breakthrough in terms of her game’s advancement if she wins in spectacular fashion one day, and bombs unbelievably the next. She won an embarrassing total of three points in the final set. Forget the bagel. It was a mugging. I guess it depends on how she reacts to this frightful defeat. And what it means coming on the heels of the triumph over Sharapova. She’s got some mental sorting probably to tend to for a bit.

Dinara is now faced with learning what her brother so far has not, that you now have to string wins together. You get into the flow of progressing now, without the streaky results of Marat’s career, winning in spectacular fashion as he did at the Australian Open last year, then disappearing off the radar again for months at a time. Or when he does play you wonder which Marat will show up. The tennis genius or the clown of God.

Fortunately, we did not see very much of this match. It was ugly tennis, according to Brad Gilbert, so maybe the TV guys got the message. The TV coverage was more about Venus and Nicole and then Martina and Kim. Venus’ performance will probably earn her a good amount of flack. And it should. Seventy unforced errors. Double ouch. It was a very frustrating match to watch if you are a Venus fan, as I still am. She would serve effectively for a while, then go off; she could put away some shots, but missed many more, particularly on her forehand side.

And somehow, you felt the transfer of desire moving from Venus over to her young opponent’s side of the net. Vaidisova wanted it more. It was plain to see. She was animated, intense, cranky, seemingly ready to veer off into teenage meltdown hell. Big boned in a hulky kind of way, such as a girl can be called hulky, she is nonetheless quite attractive. Somebody braid her hair and give her a damn Viking helmut and she’s a Valkyrie. But she has good sense to go along with that physical presence, because she’d talk herself down and back into play, and ended up winning the points.

So, I like it, she has a flair of the diva already. She flares up and fumes and basically throws it all from her system, and regroups. I should think her confidence is pretty high right now, and it should be. Although we saw today a Venus who could not camouflage her basic lack of preparation for this match. Maybe for the tournament. It was hard to decipher quite where Venus was emotionally too. Something seemed rather muted, as if she were not really fully plugged into the match. And it showed, she blew hot and cold. Hits and misses. Lots and lots of misses.

Her casual, elusive manner in her post-match interviews always add to the speculation now about, whether Venus is really going to stick the game out, so to speak, or find herself increasingly drawn to things outside of tennis. Right now she sounds upbeat, but elusive. Along with Andy Roddick, she is probably looking forward to the more pleasant environs of the grass at Wimbledon.

Kim Clijsters had to fight off a motivated and clever Martina Hingis today, their first set went to a tiebreaker, which Kim won, then her power continued as she ran away with the second. The score 7-6, 6-1.

Justine Henin-Hardenne had a relatively easy time with another blonde teenager, Anna-Lena Groenefeld of Germany, 7-5, 6-2.

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So, my picks are the same:

For the semis:
Federer-Nalbandian
Nadal-Ljubicic

The Women, the semis:

Henin-Hardenne over Clijsters
Kuznetsova over Vaidisova

The Final: Kuznetsova over JHH in three rough sets.

The men’s final: well, it’s the lull before the storm now. We are all waiting. For….THEM!!

Happy Birthday, Bjorn Borg. The Big 5-O.

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