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It was a day of contrasting straight set wins as the leading men, with the exception of Richard Gasquet, progressed to the semi-finals of the 2012 ABN AMRO world tennis tournament in Rotterdam, Holland. While second seed Tomas Berdych and third seed Juan Martin Del Potro were in cruise control mode right throughout, the top seed and 16-time Grand Slam winner Roger Federer had a good workout against Sydney champion Jarkko Nieminen. Former world no 3 Nikolay Davydenko meanwhile turned back the clock to down the fifth seed Richard Gasquet.

World no. 7 Tomas Berdych has had a great start to 2012 reaching the quarter-finals at the Australian Open (lost to Nadal) and then, subsequently winning the Open Sud de France title. And he seems to have carried the same winning momentum into this tournament as he comfortably defeated Italian Andreas Seppi 6-3, 6-4 in the quarterfinals. Seppi put in a convincing performance against world no 30 Philipp Kohlschreiber in the previous round but quite clearly, the Czech was in an entirely different league. Berdych broke the Italian's serve thrice and won 79 percent of his service points to triumph in 68 minutes.

Awaiting him in the semis is the third seed Juan Martin Del Potro. Del Potro outclassed the seventh seeded Serbian Viktor Troicki 6-0, 6-1 in little more than an hour to record his fifth straight win over the Serbian. After two challenging duels in the first two rounds, the 'Tower of Tandil' was pleasantly surprised with the lack of opposition from the other side of the net though Troicki's laboured movement was a major reason for the one-sided nature of the final scoreline.

Del Potro has a 2-1 edge over Berdych in their head-to-head record with their last encounter taking place way back in 2009. Expect a closely contested semi-final which could go either way.

In the other semi-final, it will be Roger Federer taking on Nikolay Davydenko for the 19th time on the ATP World Tour with the Swiss maestro enjoying a stupendous 16-2 advantage. Federer's quarter-final opponent Jarkko Nieminen put up a gallant display, stroking aggressively on both flanks without inhibition but just couldn't match up to the Swiss' class on the crucial points losing 5-7, 6-7. Federer won 86 percent of his first serve points, 69 percent of his second serve points and didn't face a single breakpoint in the match to register his 13th successive win over the world no 46 Finn and his 70th consecutive win over a player ranked outside the top 20.

In the final quarter-final of the day, Davydenko went after the Gasquet second serve, winning 57 percent of the second serve return points and breaking the Frenchman five times in the contest to emerge a 7-5, 6-3 winner in an hour and 38 minutes.

Quarter-final Scores:
(2) T. Berdych d. A. Seppi 6-3 6-4
(3) J.M Del Potro d. (7) V. Troicki 6-0 6-1
(1) R. Federer d. J. Nieminen 7-5 7-6(2)
N. Davydenko d. (5) R. Gasquet 7-5 6-3

File Photograph Copyright: Madrid Masters