Betfair preview - Marseille quarter-finals

Events / Editor / 16 February 2007 /

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Just two seeds remain as the Open 13 indoor tournament in Marseille enters today's quarter-final stages.

Marcos Baghdatis, the seventh seed, is aiming to follow up his win in Zagreb two weeks ago with another title triumph, while home hope Richard Gasquet is sixth seed and one of three Frenchman left in the singles event.

In the first round the tournament lost top seed Nikolay Davydenko, fourth seed Novak Djokovic and second seed Ivan Ljubicic while flu victim Mario Ancic, the third seed, quit after just four games against Italy's Andreas Seppi.

Yesterday former Wimbledon champion and eight seed Lleyton Hewitt had to pull out with damage to his right hamstring when trailing Gilles Simon 6-1 3-2. He was followed out of the tournament by fifth seed David Ferrer, who lost 4-6 6-0 6-1 to Frenchman Julien Benneteau.

So that has left Baghdatis and Gasquet as the big names left to chase the title.

Cypriot Baghdatis, ranked 17 in the world, is first in action tonight against Russian Mikhail Youzhny, who is five places below him in the rankings.

Baghdatis, 21, booked his quarter-final place with a 6-4 6-3 win over qualifier Cyril Saulnier to clock up his seventh win in a row. He won 23 of 27 first serve points and saved both the break points against him. Youzhny had a tougher time in overcoming Fabrice Santoro 6-7 6-2 6-3.

The two 6ft stars have only met once and that was at Wimbledon in 2005, when the man from Moscow triumphed in the first round 6-2 3-6 6-1 6-4. But Baghdatis is trading at 1.8 to make his rapid improvement over the last 14 months make the difference tonight, with the Russian available at 2.22.

In the last match of the night, world number 16 Gasquet takes on Sweden's world number 26 Robin Soderling, who stunned Davydenko in the opening round and then put out fellow Swede Thomas Johansson 6-4 7-5 yesterday to be first though to the last eight. It was only their second meeting on the ATP tour and avenged his defeat in Stockholm back in 2004.

Gasquet booked his third quarter-final place of the season with a 7-6 (7-2) 6-2 win over fellow Frenchman Marc Gicquel in 106 minutes.

Soderling and Gasquet have met twice before on the main tour - both last year - with Gasquet winning on carpet in Lyon, 4-6 6-3 6-3, and on grass in Nottingham in two tie-breaks, 9-7 7-5.

Interestingly when they met in their younger days on the Challenger and Futures circuits back in 2003, Soderling won both times, but needed a third-set tiebreak on both occasions.

Gasquet is fancied at 1.62 to move into the last four as he chases his fifth ATP title triumph as just 20 years of age, with Soderling priced at 2.56.

The winner of the Gasquet-Soderling clash will meet the winner of this afternoon's opening quarter-final between another Swede, Jonas Bjorkman, and Frenchman Gilles Simon, who was born along the coast at Nice.

Bjorkman is the old hand in the draw - he's 35 next month - but has amassed more than $13m in prize money since turning pro in 1991.

The two men have never met but Bjorkman has six career titles to his name, compared to Simon's none, and has experience on his side in this battle of the right handers. Betfair have Bjorkman, who breezed through his second round against Seppi 6-1 6-0, as a slight favourite at 1.93 to make the last four, with his opponent at 2.06.

France's third chance of a semi-finalist rests with Benneteau, who takes on Jarkko Nieminen of Finland in the second quarter-final this afternoon - with a clash against Baghdatis or Youzhny awaiting the winner.

It is a first meeting between Benneteau and Finland's number one and Nieminen, ranked 23 places higher at 20, should have the edge in this contest between the 25-year-olds.

Benneteau will need to harness his serve having produced 30 double faults in his matches so far this year. But the wild card was still good enough to upset Ferrer by running away with the second and third sets yesterday to make his second quarter-final of the year.

Nieminen made the last eight for the first time in four visits with a 6-4 3-6 6-3 win over French wild card Nicolas Mahut and he is trading at 1.86 to go through, with Benneteau on offer at 2.12.

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