Rafa on course to cut the margin again to Roger

Mardy Fish had played perhaps his best sustained tennis over the past months, enabling his ranking to reach to ten in the world, and after his most successful Wimbledon, this will now be a career high of eight. Were his hopes to realistically challenge the world number one in the quarters? Maybe not. However, I'm sure he and his many fans would have been frustrated with the performance in the first two sets, where Nadal managed far too many free points on the way to a two set to love lead.

Of course, the Spanish superstar had something to do with the status of the match - his groundstrokes and return of the big American serve (apparently, because I did not see the first part of this match due to BBC preference for the Murray quarter final - hard to pick that decision!) were as usual exemplary.

When I switched on to watch the finish of the match, once the final rituals of the Murray destruction were complete, it was with quite a surprise to note that Fish had fought against the rod of Rafa to break free of the hook and swim off with the third set 7-5.

No fear for the Spaniard as he slipped into his second gear for the drive home, requiring just a lazy break of serve to polish off the last American singles player in the draw.

So now the 8 semi finalists had been decided - 4 women 4 men - and from 8 different nations. A quite amazing spread this year. Even in the quarters, the line up of 16 players represented 14 nations. Good for tennis interest around the world.

My predictions are not worth the cyberspace they would take up but for your amusement here they are:

Petra Kvitova to defeat Victoria Azarenka in three sets and meet Maria Sharapova in the final after the Russian wins over Sabine Lisicki in straight sets.

Rafa Nadal to prevail over Andy Murray in five sets after the Scot wastes six match points, four on his own serve. (the last bit is a joke aimed at the long suffering Brits)

Novak Djokovic to finally achieve the number one spot in the world by defeating Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in four exciting sets, and then have the chance to prove he is number one by beating Nadal in a grand slam tournament final.