After Monte Carlo, the clay-court specialists move on to Barcelona and Casablanca, with the promise of some interesting match-ups. Let's take a closer look at some of the big names and games.

Barcelona: Believe it or not, Ivo Karlovic and Jarkko Nieminen present an interesting match. Karlovic has been lights out this year, taking the title in Houston. Big deal you say, it’s Houston, where they use green clay and women’s tennis balls to speed up the proceedings. But Karlovic actually got to the quarter-finals in Barcelona last year and so did Nieminen. Karlovic drove everyone crazy in Houston with that slice approach shot. None of those clay-court players with their extreme grips could get underneath the ball. Karlovic should get to the quarter-finals again, where he’ll meet Tommy Robredo and finally lose.

Nikolay Davydenko is having an awful year. He’s 15-10 with two losses in his only clay-court matches. I was beginning to wonder if he’d finally worn himself out by playing more tournaments than anyone else year after year, but then I looked at this statistic: Davydenko played 99 matches last year and Roger Federer 97. So, is it more tiring to be a top player and always get to the semi-finals and finals or it is more tiring to run all over the world playing the same number of matches in different tournaments? In this case the answer is easy because Davydenko played in 35 events last year (including Davis Cup) to Federer's 18.

Davydenko is at the top of the second tier of players – right behind Federer and Rafael Nadal – and he’s never going to get past either player, so No.3 is the maximum ranking he’ll likely reach. At this point, might it not be smarter to play fewer tournaments and prolong your career and be happy with a top 10 ranking instead of traipsing all over to stay at No.3 or No.4?

Having said that, I think Davydenko will get to the quarter-finals where he could meet Guillermo Cañas. Cañas is burning up the circuit with a 17-4 record on the year and two straight victories over Federer. He also has two victories over Juan Carlos Ferrero this year and should meet him in the quarter-finals. There there's his 4-1 record over Tommy Robredo - his possible semi-final opponent. It's easy to forget how good Cañas was before his disputed 15-month suspension for using performance-enhancing drugs.

Rafael Nadal should meet Cañas in the final. He has a 2-0 record over Cañas, so he’s not likely to suffer the same fate as Federer.