!Stan
By Rosangel Valenti, TW Contributing Editor
Good morning. This is your daily thread for discussing the tennis action taking place in Rome (or in Berlin, for the WTA).
I'll be attending today's semifinals in Rome, having planned this event well in advance - though it's safe to say that the degree of prescience that may have been at work in securing tickets for the Monte Carlo final wasn't working so well on this occasion. For those missing Rafa's presence in today's semifinals today, the best I can offer is the pictures I took of him on Wednesday during his match with Juan Carlos Ferrero - which can be found on this link. I also wandered around and took pictures of various other players (just a couple of TMF in practice) - these can be found here.
Other that the main event, which involves the semifinals between Stanislas Wawrinka and Andy Roddick (who have never played each other before), and Novak Djokovic and Radek Stepanek (head-to-head 2-1, but with no meetings on clay to date), there will be some WTA qualifying rounds going on on the outer courts, and also, on the main court, the semifinals of the BlackRock Tour of Champions, some of which I hope to catch.
As always, enjoy today's tennis.