Newport & Euro Dirt - Day 5

Not even the combination of truly foul English weather and the date of Friday the 13th could put a dampener on today's tennis triumphs.

Kicking proceedings off in positive fashion was Nicolas Almagro, who as predicted cruised into the semi finals of the Swedish Open in Bastad with a problem free straight sets victory over Luis Horna. The poor Peruvian was not happy throughout this match and even had to call the trainer at one point, as an insect flew straight into his eye when he was about to receive a game point serve from Almagro. Horna slumped to his knees as if nailed by a sniper and then staggered back to the green padded deckchairs that the tournament has provided for the players. It didn't help and my tip will now have the tough proposition of a resurgent Moya in the semi's tomorrow. I may lay a bit off Almagro tonight as a saver against the threat of both Moya and an in form David Ferrer.

Over in Gstaad, Igor Andreev put in a very impressive performance in taking out Richard Gasquet in straight sets and is now a very warm favourite to reach the final, as his semi final opponent will be Andreas Seppi, against whom the Russian has a 4-0 head-to-head record and is 1-5 with Stan James to emerge victorious.

The other quarter final which held my interest was Gael Monfils against my other tip and fellow countryman Paul Henri-Mathieu and this is a match I would have loved to have watched live. Sadly this wasn't possible and looking at the bare stats, this appears to have been a typical Monfils match. 20 aces and 9 double faults for Monfils seem to suggest the usual haphazard mixture of clean winners and wild errors from the frustrating Parisian and Mathieu walked the first set 6-1. Predictably, Monfils won the next 6-4 before sanity was restored and Mathieu won the decider 6-3 and now plays Radek Stepanek, who has had something of a resurgence this week after a poor season thus far following a recent injury.

Mathieu's victory has enabled me to lay a bit off him at a short price and hopefully I'm looking at a profit from the Alps tournament now after a wobbly day on Wednesday and all things being equal (i.e. Mahut obliging in Newport) I could be looking at a decent profit on the week.