Last year, Andy Murray had a bit of luck winning Shanghai.  The draw was set for Murray to meet Nadal in the semis.  Except Nadal never got to the semis, losing early to Jurgen Melzer.  Murray didn’t face his first true tough competitor until the finals, but Murray dispatched Roger Federer pretty easily.  And, to be fair, he also beat Tsonga easily, but with Tsonga, you can get lucky.  He gets injured often enough that many times he’s coming back on tour and still lacks the legs to play a long tournament.

This year, his luck started a bit early.  Both Federer and Djokovic decided not to play to recover from injuries.  Robin Soderling is still out due to mono.  Juan Martin del Potro also decided not to play.

It only got better as the tournament went on.  Murray didn’t play a second round match (he had a bye in the first round) because Tursunov withdrew due to a wrist injury.  He played Stan Wawrinka, but was playing well enough that he got a double-break insurance in the first and third sets, even if he gave one break back each set.  Murray was slated to meet the steady Gilles Simon in the quarterfinals.  To be fair, he has a very good record against Simon, so likely, he’d do fine.  However, Matthew Ebden upset Simon winning a third set tiebreak.

So Murray played Ebden instead of Simon.  When a player like Ebden gets a good win, it can be a tough to recover and play a good match, especially against the hottest player playing now.  The two held serve early on when Murray managed a 0-40 triple breaker, but, alas, he was unable to break which frustrated him.  The two played fairly long rallies.  Lately, Murray has taken to grunting sounding a fair bit like Djokovic.  Despite the failure to break, Murray eventually got on a roll, and got two breaks.

Murray continued to play well in the second set and broke twice again.  By this point, Ebden, who had been keeping fairly even off the ground, started missing more and Murray was gaining some confidence.  Murray only faced one break point the entire match (which he saved).  Final score: 6-3, 6-1.

The remaining top seed, David Ferrer (the number 3 seed), was first on the main court.  He was playing Andy Roddick, tenth seed.  Roddick had been struggling a bit with his serve, getting broken more than usual (which is hardly at all).  He felt he corrected this against Almagro.  With his recent win against Ferrer at the US Open, Roddick was hoping he could do it again.

However, Ferrer was back to his usual patterns, playing his inside out forehands, then waiting for opportune moments.  Even so, Roddick was also holding his serve and so the first set went to a tiebreak.  Ferrer got a mini-break somewhat early on, but Roddick then got 2 points off Ferrer’s serve (due to errors) and held his own serve to steal the first set.  Ferrer then had two breaks in the second set to even the match with a 6-2 win.  The third set continued with no breaks of serve to a tiebreak, but this time Ferrer won easily.  Final score: 6-7, 6-2, 7-6.

Florian Mayer, the guy who upset Nadal, was apparently not ready to play the hard serving Feliciano Lopez who won 6-2, 6-4.  Again, much like Ebden, Mayer wasn’t able to maintain the game to create a second upset.

One player that is continuing to create upsets is Kei Nishikori.  Nishikori upset Jo-Wilfried Tsonga earlier in the week.  Many of the Chinese reporters can relate to Nishikori because he’s also Asian and the Chinese would love to have one of their own do well.  However, Chinese, as they are wont to do, feel their stature (not being as tall–despite tall Chinese folks like Li Na or even Yao Ming) prevents them from success.  One of them asked why Nishikori is always playing 3 sets.  Has he always been able to come back in 3 sets?  Nishikori explained that he would much prefer to win in straight sets, but he kept finding himself down the initial set and having to work his way back.  Still, he felt, starting off well was something he needed to work on.

And apparently, he listened to his own advice, beating Alexandr Dolgopolov in straight sets, breaking him 4 times while only being broken once.  He also saved a bunch of break points.  Final score: 6-4, 6-3.

Nishikori plays Murray in the semifinals while Lopez plays Ferrer in the other semis.