Once roommates on grade-school tennis trips, Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin became Grand Slam champions, claimed the No. 1 ranking and played each other nearly two dozen times before calling it a career. Now the friendly rivalry is out of retirement, and the two Belgians will meet once more Thursday night in the semifinals of the Sony Ericsson Open.

There are a couple of new faces in the top half quarter-finals of the Sony Ericsson Open on Thursday with No. 5 seed Robin Soderling of Sweden and No. 13 seed Mikhail Youzhny of Russia.

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Eighth-seeded Poles Mariusz Fyrstenberg and Marcin Matkowski played a near perfect mix of power and finesse to oust No. 2 seeds Bob Bryan and Mike Bryan 6-2, 6-2 in quarter-final action Wednesday at the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami.

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Any Roddick charged into the Sony Ericsson Open semi-finals Wednesday with a convincing 6-3, 6-4 win over Nicolas Almagro and move within one win of back-to-back ATP World Tour Masters 1000 finals.

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by Pete Bodo

Justine Henin is to tennis what the tank watch is to the timepiece crowd, Carhartt overalls are to the workingman, and the Gibson electric guitars is to rock musicians. She’s a classic. She seems to incorporate, in that petite frame and with those classic, old-school strokes, the history of tennis, where it’s been and, if not exactly where it’s going, then why it got to where we are. Her game shimmers, like the northern lights, and as she showed today she has a way of imposing a modulated, classic template on any match she plays.

She has shortcomings, for sure, and not all of those that are directly related to her slight stature. One of those periodic weaknesses that crops up now and then almost waylaid her on the way the the semifinals here in Miami. In the first set of her match with No. 2 seed Caroline Wozniacki, Henin hit her way out of contention in a blaze of ill-advised if inspired bravado.

The tennis was of high-quality from the start – this was not going going be one of those break festivals; nothing classic about those – and Henin played a marvelous game to break Wozniacki for 6-5 in the first set, capping the game with one of the numerous forehand winners she hit today.

Henin had been attacking the ball with great verve, but she appeared to get so wrapped up in the sheer joy of it that she pushed the envelope so far that it tore. Serving for the set, Henin began pulling the trigger a little early, and with a little too much enthusiasm; she fell out of rhythm and Wozniacki broke her. In the meat of the ensuing tiebreaker, a pair of forehand errors left Henin down, 2-4, and Wozniacki capitalized; she then ran the score up to 6-2. Although Henin clawed back to 5-6, she lost the tiebreaker – and you had to wonder if she’d ratcheted up the aggression to the point where she could no longer control it.

Henin struggled thereafter (she took a time-out for treatment on her back early in the second set), but she did what few WTA players seem capable of these days; she hung in there and paid attention to the details, took care of her serve, made her opponent work for everything with the duckbill of her cap pulled down low to her brows.

But both women played boldly. Given the fearless way Henin assaulted the ball, Wozniacki’s ability to overcome a love-40 deficit in the sixth game of the second set to hold (she reeled off five straight points) was less a comment on chances not taken by Henin than on the nerve and skill of the 19-year old Wozniacki.

Henin ultimately managed a break for 5-3, and she served out the second set. She broke Wozniacki again in the third game of the final set, but the subsequent games remained compelling. Wozniacki appeared to tire, but she didn’t give ground, mentally. Henin won it with no further breaks, 6-7, 6-4, 6-4.

Over the course of the match, Henin struck a nearly perfect balance between winners and errors: 53 to 51, respectively. The high number of errors worried her not in the least. As she said in the press room afterward: “A lot of balls were coming back in the court, you know. She (Wozniacki) didn’t do a lot mistakes and pushed me to, you know, do everything at some point. That wasn’t that easy. I didn’t have two balls in a row that were the same rhythm.”

While we’re on statistics: Henin hit 27 winners with her forehand, and six with her backhand. It’s funny, but as much as people ooh-and-aah over that backhand, it involves a lot of moving parts and no small degree of the unconventional – does anyone else hit off the back foot, even from the baseline, more frequently than Henin? Does any woman with a comparable one-hander take so long to load up and finish with so conspicuous a flourish? It takes time to set up and break down that stroke when the show is over, and while time is not of the essence in the red clay capitals, a lot of tennis is played on faster surfaces where set-up and recovery are more critical issues.

For my money, Henin’s forehand -  certainly the way she tagged it today – is a more trustworthy if less sexy tool. I guess we love Henin’s backhand the way we appreciate baroque architecture, but we can admire her forehand the way we like Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture. It makes sense, in a way. The baroque always implies striving, the yearning for beauty and perfection. It warms our hearts, even though it can seem excessive. More modern trends gravitate toward utility and simplicity - that famous marriage of form and function – and if they’re not nearly as inspiring, they more often get us through the day.

However, having the baroque to the port and the functional to the starboard isn’t a bad way to go, and when I asked Henin about it she was more than happy to elaborate: “Well, my backhand is the most natural shot, I would say, so that’s why a lot of people are talking about my backhand. But in the last few years, even in my first career, I think my forehand really gave me the winners.

“I can build the point with my backhand, but I hit the winners more with my forehand.. .I’ve worked very hard on my serve and forehand.  That’s because it’s been something sometimes difficult in the past. My backhand, sometimes I’m getting lazy on it, because I don’t work as much on it. But it still gives me, I mean, a few points.”

Of course, sometimes beauty and function dovetail nicely, as they did when Henin wiped out a break point at 3-all in the second set with a signature backhand down the line. You could hear the crisp pop of the ball clear up the cheap seats.

It was, like the diminutive lady who delivered it, an absolute classic.

Is it all about execution? Does shot selection mean
anything? Down match point in a third-set tiebreaker to Roger Federer Tuesday night, having squandered numerous opportunities to pull off a potentially
career-changing upset, Tomas Berdych let two forehands fly. One went inside
out, landed a foot or two inside the baseline, and elicited a middling
mid-court reply from Federer. On the next forehand, Berdych leaned in and belted it crosscourt. This ball also landed just inside the baseline, for a winner. A few minutes later, against
all odds and historical precedents, Berdych won the match.

Because of the result, we can say that the big Czech’s caution to the
wind approach was the right way to go, the smart, proactive play. After all,
“be aggressive” is the default strategic position recommended to all professional tennis
players, no matter what the circumstances. But if Berdych had missed one of
those two forehands, thereby losing the match and reinforcing his reputation as
one of the game’s foremost head cases and wastes of talent, we would have said that his tactic was reckless, that it was inevitable that he would choke, and that the great
Roger Federer would prevail in this pressure moment.

Obviously, both of these assessments can’t be correct. Was it
just dumb luck that Berdych made those forehands and Federer subsequently committed a routine error to end the match? No, that’s not true either—execution is a
function of correctly gauging what you can do at any given moment. And this was a
special moment for Berdych. On the previous point, he had nervously guided a
forehand up the line that the side linesman, after initially signaling that the ball was good, called wide. Berdych challenged and walked to the net. He appeared sure that his shot had landed in. Hawk-Eye indicated that it had been
wide by the narrowest sliver possible. Berdych stared at the court for a long
time before walking back to the baseline. Along the way, he caught his coach’s
eye and the two of them shared a wide smile that began ruefully but ended up
seeming almost giddy. Berdych got down in his return stance with a look of
happiness on his face, all tension gone from his body.

The moment reminded me of the last holes of a Masters golf tournament a few
years ago, when Phil Mickelson, after being wound tight for four days, suddenly began to smile
with relief, right at the moment when he knew he couldn’t win the tournament. A
natural reaction, in some ways, but it also seemed to me to be the definition
of an athlete who’s unable to enjoy competition—it didn’t matter whether he’d
won or lost, Mickelson was just happy that it was over. The same was true for Berdych
once Federer reached match point. The Czech, who had been up 4-2 in the third and
who by all rights deserved the victory, could finally relax. By guiding that
forehand wide, he’d already choked. The worst was over.

But in this case Berdych, also a guy who doesn’t thrive competitively, had one more chance. What he did right, and intelligently, was to gauge
his frame of mind and choose his shot from there. The ice had broken inside this normally chilly player, and aggression really was the smart way to go. He
was much more likely to execute a risky forehand at that moment than he was when he was ahead. 

Berdych’s attitude and shot selection at this moment compared favorably with his opponent in two ways. Federer later said that
his timing had been off, but he never made any concessions to that fact during the
match. He continued to hit for the lines, even as he piled up 61
unforced errors—to be fair, you can’t play all that conservatively against Berdych,
who is absolutely lethal when he has time to set up. From an
emotional standpoint, where Berdych enjoyed the moment in the end, Federer
looked, as he had looked earlier against Florent Serra, like he would rather
have been pretty much anywhere else. I’m sure he cared and wanted to win, but
his aura in general was one of irritation, even disdain, at not being able to
do everything he wanted, rather than one of determination to win anyway. This isn’t a new look for Federer, but for me last night, it made
watching him a chore—he was the one who couldn’t enjoy the competition. It’s also not a new or alarming result for Federer. Hard as it to believe, he
hasn’t reached the final of either Indian Wells or Key Biscayne since 2006. But he’s come back to win plenty of Slams over those years. At the majors, Federer has more time to find his game, and more motivation to do what it takes to survive even when he
can’t.

Normally it’s Berdych, not Federer, who is a chore to watch. A few years ago, he was yet another guy who I saw on a deep side court and
believed was the real thing, a future Slam contender. He had the height, he had
the timing, he had the smoothest power for a big guy since Marat Safin, he even
seemed to have an even-keel demeanor. Like dozens of other sure shots,
Berdych turned out to be a disappointment. His face a stony mask, he played a soulless brand
of tennis; I got the feeling he couldn’t put himself on the line emotionally.
Either he had it on a certain day, or he didn’t. “Finding a way to win” was not
a phrase that cropped up alongside Tomas Berdych’s name very often, if ever. On Tuesday night, at least, he found a way to win. He did it by breaking the ice. He did it with a smile.

by Pete Bodo

It used to be that, as a reporter, you could breathe a big sigh of relief and start making dinner reservations when you saw the Roger Federer was scheduled to play a mid-event match at night; you were in safe hands and spared the customary double-shift that has become de rigeur in this day of split sessions at most major tournaments.

No longer.

As you all know by now, Federer lost 7-6 in the third to Tomas Berdych last night after failing to convert a match point for the second Masters 1000 tournament in a row. What kind of odds might you have gotten on that metric, at the start of Indian Wells? There, the lucky (and astonished) lottery winner was Marcos Baghdatis. Here, it was Berdych, but this time, Federer blew just one match point instead of three. Dude’s improving, huh?

So now we have the spectre of coaches leaving their proteges with this bit of advice at the locker room door, as the step out to meet Roger Federer: Just take your time. Don’t rush. Don’t panic. Once he gets to match point, it’s in the bag!

If that makes some of you Federer fans want to rip off your black armband and strangle me with it, remember, we were here, or some place very like it, almost exactly a year ago, when Federer decided to try drilling for oil through the purple Crandon Park court with his Wilson. And by the end of the Grand Slam season, you were all sitting back, thinking, Well, that didn’t work out so bad…

The bottom line is that while winning is always preferable to losing, Federer doesn’t exactly need these Masters titles to flesh out his resume. This is no Ivan Ljubicic here. Shoot, Mirka probably uses Roger’s collection of Masters shields as coasters, even though sippy-cups don’t require them (you know how she is. . .). Federer is above sustaining emotional damage from losses like these two; he knows what lies buried in the strings and frame of his racket; that issue was resolved long, long ago.

What he does have to fret about, though, is having to live with what every other player on the planet faces as a condition of the workplace: the sense that perhaps he’s vulnerable. The impetus this will give some opponents to step up and play bolder, more confident tennis. The glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, if you can stay with Federer through the chicanes and turns, you just might implant a splinter of doubt in his ordinarily sure hand when you reach the home stretch. When it comes to blown opportunities, players have memories like elephants, although the best ones, like Federer, are excellent at suppressing them. But there’s no real remedy for history. Federer’s best strategy will be to do what he’s always done best: pull away from his opponent with an extra gear that’s lately been unavailable.

Of course, Federer is aware of this. But his main concern of the moment is finding his form. He said of last night’s error-prone performance: “I fought as much as I could. My game has issues at the moment, I’m definitely lacking timing. I don’t know where that comes from.”

Given a choice between having fight and a wobbly game or a functional game but wavering desire, I’d take the former, any time.

Nobody really knows “where that (loss of timing) comes from.” While there’s an outside chance that it comes from his head, from simply losing that instinctive, predatory sharpness that is the young player’s greatest ally, Federer has earned the right not to be second-guessed that way (he earned it last year). The issues more likely are subject to correction, driven by the natural reaction to the events of the past few weeks. Federer probably will go home, rest and think for a few days, take a deep breath and book a practice court. He knows by now how this game works; how you’re only as good as your last result, and that’s apt to make him dangerous come the clay court season.

Lightning never strikes the same place twice, they say, but in Federer’s case it did. But I expect that he’ll respond by throwing a few bolts of his own in the coming meat of the Grand Slam season.

The president of the Turkish Tennis Federation told the Daily Telegraph that it’s stunning that Great Britain’s Davis Cup team will play against his nation in a relegation tie in July. The losing team will be demoted to Group Three of the Euro-African Zone.

“It’s shocking that Britain is where it is in the Davis Cup,” Ayda Uluc said. “Britain has Wimbledon, and a lot of money, so should have better players, and should be higher up in the Davis Cup.”

The Turkish Tennis Federation is said to have an annual budget of $530,000, while Britain’s national tennis association spends approximately $90 million a year.—M.C.

The president of the Turkish Tennis Federation told the Daily Telegraph that it’s stunning that Great Britain’s Davis Cup team will play against his nation in a relegation tie in July. The losing team will be demoted to Group Three of the Euro-African Zone.

“It’s shocking that Britain is where it is in the Davis Cup,” Ayda Uluc said. “Britain has Wimbledon, and a lot of money, so should have better players, and should be higher up in the Davis Cup.”

The Turkish Tennis Federation is said to have an annual budget of $530,000, while Britain’s national tennis association spends approximately $90 million a year.—M.C.

For the first time in the tournament’s 26-year history, three Spaniards have reached the men’s quarterfinals in Miami. Rafael Nadal, Fernando Verdasco and Nicolas Almagro all posted victories on Tuesday.

“Tennis in Spain right now, all the players, we are in a great moment,” said Verdasco, who defeated Marin Cilic, 6-4, 7-6 (3). “Miami is a little bit like playing at home so for us. It gives us energy and power to try to do your best.”—M.C.