Gambling is one of the many pleasures to be found in the destination city of Monte Carlo. Saturday afternoon at the Monte Carlo Rolex Masters, a king and a joker found a winning hand, and a ticket to Sunday’s championship match.

The king, of course, is Rafael Nadal. The current master of men’s tennis and the undisputed lord of red dirt won yet another straight-set match in Monaco by ousting a valiant Andy Murray, 6-2, 7-6 (4). Nadal, who hasn’t lost a single set at this tournament since the 2006 final against Roger Federer, earned the right to play for an unprecedented fifth consecutive Monte Carlo title. While French Open championships represent the holy grail for claycourt competitors, another piece of Monte Carlo crystal would enable the Mallorcan to gain ground on Bjorn Borg as the best claycourter of all time.

Nadal endured pockets of spotty play against Murray, who acquitted himself well in his first-ever semifinal at a claycourt event. Rafael Nadal led 5-2 in the second set and seemed to have the match fully in command, but Murray unleashed his best stuff to force a tiebreak. On the verge of losing a single set on clay–which, for him, ranks as a mammoth upset in its own right–Nadal battened down the hatches and raised his game in the tiebreak. At 4-3 and 5-4, the Spaniard ended extraordinary rallies with eye-popping winners that reminded the fourth-seeded Scot who was boss. Murray should be extremely encouraged by his performance, which will allow the world No. 4 to become a factor at the upcoming French Open, but when the time came to decide a victor on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, Nadal put his stamp on the proceedings. “El Rey de Clay” received a worthy challenge from a world-class opponent, but the unstoppable Nadal reminded observers why he still holds sway on the terre battue of Europe.

Enough of the king. The joker who will stare down Nadal on Sunday is Novak Djokovic. Serbian diehards prefer the nickname “Nole,” but many other tennis fans–with a little creative license and the use of a silent “d”–find it appealing to view the 21-year-old standout as “the Djoker.” (Who could blame them in light of Djokovic’s YouTube-friendly impersonations of various tennis players on the men’s and women’s tours?) The third seed might play the class clown when he’s not fighting for tournament titles, but between the painted lines, this fiery competitor takes his profession quite seriously. Djokovic used a steely resolve and a smart, patient approach to wear down Stanislas Wawrinka in the day’s other semifinal, beating the 13th-seeded Swiss in three sets, 4-6, 6-1, 6-3.

Djokovic, as has been well documented, is playing at a level well below the form that carried him to tennis heights in the first half of 2008. Nevertheless, this semifinal triumph over Wawrinka indicated that the 2008 Australian Open champion is becoming a little more comfortable and confident on the court. One huge source of encouragement for the Djokovic camp is that the Belgrade native won a match by essentially outlasting an opponent. Djokovic played particularly erratic tennis in set one, but dramatically lowered his error count over the final two sets. Djokovic’s shaky physical fitness has often hampered his ability to compete, but on this day, the Serbian star was not only willing, but happy, to engage in long rallies and force Wawrinka to go for too much on his shots. This is exactly what happened as the match wore on, and as a result, the Swiss–despite a plus-nine margin in terms of winners (24 to 15)–sagged as he neared the finish line. Wawrinka grabbed a 2-0 lead in the final set, but as Djokovic rededicated himself to patience and high-percentage groundstrokes, unforced errors piled up for the underdog. Wawrinka finished with 58 errors to just 32 for Djokovic. Whereas faster surfaces (grass and especially hardcourt) demand a more positive, attacking style, claycourt tennis is usually decided by the ability to limit errors. Djokovic performed that feat, while Wawrinka couldn’t, and that told the tale in a slugfest that lasted roughly two and a half hours.

Briefly turning to Sunday’s final, Djokovic last played Nadal on clay in last year’s French Open, with the Spaniard coming out on top in straight sets. Djokovic played Rafa tougher than anyone else at the most recent edition of Roland Garros (Nadal memorably dismantled Roger Federer in the title match), but the King of Clay still didn’t concede a solitary set. Djokovic will be hard-pressed to win, but much like Murray, he should be able to gain a certain amount of satisfaction from remaining competitive against Nadal. After all, that’s as much as anyone can reasonably hope to attain against the supreme Spaniard these days in the world of claycourt tennis.

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WTA Update – Family Circle Cup in Charleston, South Carolina

The second of Saturday’s two semifinals has yet to be completed (Marion Bartoli goes against Sabine Lisicki), but the day’s first semifinal felt like a full day of tennis. Fifth-seeded Caroline Wozniacki outlasted top-seeded Elena Dementieva, 6-4, 5-7, 7-5, in an up-and-down affair that lasted just under three hours.

For much of the afternoon, it appeared that Wozniacki, an impressive 18-year-old who is cementing herself as a dogged competitor, would get off the court without too much extra effort. The Polish-born resident of Denmark–after winning the first set–held a 5-2, double-break lead in the second stanza. With a grumpy Dementieva spraying errors all over the joint, a routine conclusion was expected by everyone in the stadium.

This match, however, turned out to be anything but routine.

Suddenly, shockingly, Wozniacki collapsed when on the verge of victory. The teenager felt the pressure of closing out a high-caliber opponent, failing to serve out the match on two straight occasions. The inability to seal the deal at 5-2 was somewhat understandable, but Wozniacki’s jelly-legged performance at 5-4 represented a classic choke. The No. 5 seed threw in two double faults, one of them on break point, to allow Dementieva to level the set at 5-all. The flow of the match continued to spin out of control for Wozniacki, who lost her serve at 5-6 to give the Russian the second set. The smart money had to rest with Dementieva, who had steadied her game enough to profit from her opponent’s mental frailty.

Once again, the conventional wisdom would prove to be wrong.

As disappointing as her second-set collapse was, Wozniacki blotted out that failure with a notable showcase of psychic strength in the third set. Instead of continuing to tumble, the 18-year-old put the brakes on her slide and fought Dementieva on even terms. After falling behind at 5-4, Wozniacki drew a number of errors from the top seed before drilling a down-the-line forehand passing shot on her fifth match point of the day. It took a lot longer than it should have, but then again, Caroline Wozniacki ultimately did advance to the Family Circle Cup final. Not every women’s tennis player would have conjured up the resilience needed to prevail the way this tenacious teenager did on Saturday.