Tennis: Fernando Verdasco, Robin Soderling and ATP Recap

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Upsets took a holiday on Thursday at the three ATP tournaments underway. Only three seeded players across three tournaments went down in defeat as the SAP Open and the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament reached the round of 16 and the Brasil Open started its quarterfinals.

In the ABN AMRO at Rotterdam, top seeded Robin Soderling had to sweat out a 6-3, 5-7, 7-6(7) victory over Phillip Kohlschreiber to keep his quest for a repeat alive.

Soderling served 16 aces, eight of them in the pivotal third set, to advance to a meeting with sixth-seeded Mikhail Youzhny, who swept Thiemo de Bakker, 6-4, 6-4.

The other prime-time emerging quarterfinal matchup will pit eighth seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga against fourth seed Tomas Berdych. Both men had to go three sets to reach the quarterfinals, as Tsonga rallied past Michael Llodra, 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 and Berdych held off Russian qualifier Dmitry Tursunov, 6-4, 4-6, 7-5.

After upsetting Andy Murray, Marcos Baghdatis went on to defeat Feliciano Lopez, 7-6(3), 6-3. He is underway today against seventh seed Ivan Ljubicic, an easy 6-0, 6-4 winner over Benoit Paire.

SAP Open

Top-seeded Fernando Verdasco overcame Ivo Karlovic's big serve to take a 7-5, 7-5 win on Thursday. Karlovic notched 14 aces, but Verdasco was the more efficient server, converting 80 percent of his first serves and 84 percent of his second serves for points. Verdasco will take on fifth-seeded Denis Istomin, a 7-6(7), 7-6(4) winner over American Michael Russell.

Second-seeded Gael Monfils had to go the distance to reach the next round, fighting off American Robert Kendrick, 6-2, 5-7, 6-4. Also advancing were two former Grand Slam winners—seventh-seeded Lleyton Hewitt, who beat Brian Dabul, 3-6, 7-5, 6-3 and Juan Martin Del Potro, a 6-1, 7-6(1) winner over Lukas Lacko.

Hewitt and Del Potro will square-off in the quarterfinals. It's Del Potro's first quarterfinal appearance since he reached the Barclays Finals in November of 2009.

The only seeded player to fall on Thursday at the SAP was Japan's Kei Nishikori, upset by American Tim Smyczek, 6-4, 3-6, 6-1. Ranked 172nd in the world entering the week, Smyzcek is a native of Wisconsin.

Brasil Open

There were few surprises in the quarterfinals at Costa do Sauipe. Advancing to the semifinals were No. 1 seed Nicolas Almagro, a 6-2, 6-4 winner over Rui Machado; Juan Ignacio Chela, seeded fifth, who defeated third seed Thomaz Bellucci, 6-1, 6-2; fourth-seeded Alexandr Dolgopolov, who continued his sizzling start to 2011 by defeating Potito Starace 6-3, 6-4; and Brazil's Ricardo Mello, who continued his impressive run that began with an upset of second seed Albert Montanes and Thursday defeated Pablo Andujar, 6-1, 6-0.

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