City: Bucharest, Romania
Surface: Outdoor Clay
Championship Points: 250
2008 Singles Champion: Gilles Simon
2008 Doubles Champions: Nicolas Devilder and Paul-Henri Mathieu

Two-time defending champion, Gilles Simon will not defend his title this year. His knee injury has forced him out of Davis Cup and now this title.

Hometown favorite, Victor Hanescu earns top-seed honors and will be the one to beat. He will enjoy audience support and will have the incentive of not letting them down. Nicolas Almagro, Juan Monaco and Igor Andreev will be on hand to mix it up with Hanescu.

As the season winds down, it is harder to tell the clear favorites, as injuries and just burnout become the tale of the end of the season. We shall see who steps up this week in Bucharest.

Tournament Draw
Singles / Doubles

Monday’s Order of Play

(Image: Getty Images)

City: Gstaad, Switzerland
Surface: Outdoor Clay
Championship Points: 250
2008 Singles Champion: Victor Hanescu
2008 Doubles Champions: Jaroslav Levinsky and Filip Polasek

Stanislas Wawrinka, Philipp Kohlschreiber, Igor Andreev, Victor Hanescu, Jeremy Chardy, Nicolas Kiefer, Feliciano Lopez and Paul-Henri Mathieu are the top-seeds at this tournament. This week could be a good opportunity for top-seed and hometown favorite Stanislas Wawrinka to win his first title this year, but Jeremy Chardy has been hot of late. We shall see how it all shakes out this week.

Tournament Draw
Singles / Doubles

(Images: Allianz Suisse Open Gstaad)

Gilles Simon had a really solid match today. It was probably the best his played in months. He had a routine win over Victor Hanescu 6-2 7-5 6-2. The last Frenchman in the draw now advances to play Juan Carlos Ferrero.

(Image: AP)

Juan Carlos Ferrero beat Victor Hanescu of Romania 6-3 7-5 and won in pretty convincing fashion. The Spaniard was broken once in the first set and faced no break points in the second set.

On the other end, Hanescu was broken three times in the first set and had to fight off 5 break points in the second set. If you give someone that many chances, they are going to eventually to take advantage you. Ferrero’s persistence finally paid off when he broke Hanescu for the set and the match after Hanescu was up 40-0 in the last game of the second set.

I had a chance to watch the second set. Sometimes players return from injury and do not look so well, but Ferrero looked like he was in good form. He moved well and looked like the old “Mosquito.” Being a baseliner, Ferrero was often drawn in by Hanescu’s dropshots. Ferrero had no problem running down dropshots from the baseline and coming up with winners at the net. His groundstrokes were solid, and he was really pushing Hanescu around on the court.

Ferrero advances to the semifinal where he awaits the winner of the Andreev-Gicquel match. Ferrero leads Andreev 3-1 in the their head-to head matchup, with the Spaniard winning their last three meetings. In the other matchup, Gicquel leads Ferrero 1-0.

(image: Grand Prix Hassan II)