Are you kidding me? Marat Safin and Rafael Nadal have never played each other? Ridiculous! Nadal won his first title three years ago and Safin has been on the tour since 1997.

The ATP plans to reduce the number of Masters Series events from nine to eight but they haven’t gone as far as the WTA which plans to shorten the season, increase the number of required tournaments, and suspend players if they skip required events. You can see why the ATP needs to do something like that if they want their top players to meet every now and then.

Actually, the ATP has already made a change. Monte Carlo is the first Masters Series event in some time that has a 56-player draw instead of 64. The remaining outdoors Masters events will use this format and that means the top eight seeds only need to win five matches to take the title instead of six, because they have a first-round bye.

Apparently that's not enough for James Blake and Tommy Haas. This is a required tournament and neither player is here. Andy Roddick has an excuse -- he re-injured his hamstring in Houston -- but let’s be real, he hasn’t played this event since 2003 and probably won’t until the ATP gets mean like the WTA and threatens to suspend him.

If you think I’m complaining too much, consider this: David Nalbandian and Nadal have never met either. They’ve been hanging out in the top ten together for the past few years and three of Nalbandian’s five titles are on clay so there’s no excuse. Now let's look at the Monte Carlo event.

Monte Carlo Masters (outdoors clay):
Nikolay Davydenko is a tough guy to pick in any tournament because he could lose in the first round or he could get to the final, you never know. There isn’t any pattern. For instance, Robin Soderling beat Davydenko in the first round here last year even though Soderling is average on clay courts. Head to head they’re even, so I’m going to guess that the result will flip flop this year and Davydenko beats Soderling in the second round.

I’m gonna take a chance here and pick Florian Mayer over Andy Murray in the second round because Mayer has beaten Tommy Robredo and Juan Ignacio Chela on clay and Murray hasn’t beaten anyone. Mayer lost in the first round at Valencia last week but his opponent, Santiago Ventura, made it to the semi-finals.

If David Ferrer and Novak Djokovic meet in the third round, it should be worth watching. Ferrer collected one clay title last year and Djokovic two and that’s why Djokovic is the better player. All four of Tommy Robredo’s titles are clay but that makes him only slightly better than Nicolas Almagro, who picked up his second title in Valencia on Sunday. Robredo is also slightly better than Davydenko on clay if they meet in the quarter-finals.

Richard Gasquet is an excellent clay court player and Ivan Ljubicic can be up and down in big events, but until Gasquet stays on the court for more than a few weeks at a time without injuring himself, I’m picking Ljubicic if they meet in the third round.

Roger Federer and Djokovic could meet in the quarter-finals and I’m taking a wild shot here by choosing Djokovic to win it and get past Fernando Gonzalez and into the final. Yes, that's right, I'm picking Djokovic over Federer. The Swiss master's confidence has a dent in it from back to back losses to Guillermo Canas and Djokovic's already bold confidence has never been higher.

Except for Chela in the second round, Nadal has a pretty easy path to the semi-finals even if he does finally meet up with both Safin and Nalbandian along the way. Djokovic should then lose easily to Nadal who was, if you remember, undefeated on clay last year.

Selections:
Quarterfinals: Federer, Djokovic, Gonzalez, Ljubicic, Robredo, Davydenko, Nalbandian, Nadal.
Semifinals: Djokovic, Gonzalez, Robredo, Nadal.
Final: Djokovic, Nadal.
Winner: Nadal

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