The man from Cordoba, David Nalbandian, played a great match. He defeated the French Richard Gasquet 6-4, 3-6 and 7-6 (3) and made his run to the semi-finals of the traditional tournament of Queens, which is played in London and is the prelude to Wimbledon. Both displayed a great level of tennis, especially in backhand shots, which both used to make the difference. But David was more consistent in spite of having defined in the final tie-break. The man from Unquillo won his services with authority, but Gasquet also played well, so there were no breaks in the final round. That’s when Nalbandian showed his best. He took the match with variants, wrong-footing and going for his incisive parallel backhand. Tomorrow, Saturday, he will face the Serbian Novak Djiokovic, third seeded, who crushed Lleyton Hewitt with a double 6-2. They are 1-1 in history. Both matches were in 2007 on hard courts: in Canada the Serbian won 6-2 and 6-3 and in Madrid the Argentine number one won 6-4, 7-6.