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Tuesday, January 23 |
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ROUNDUP: Nadal Squeezes Through In Murray Marathon
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Rafael Nadal had to struggle on Monday to fight off an upset charge from Briton Andy Murray, with the second-seeded prodigy scraping to a 6-7 (3-7), 6-4 , 4-6, 6-3, 6-1 victory into the quarter-finals of the Australian Open,
The success nudged Spain's Nadal to his best career showing at the event, with Murray failing to become the first Brit to reach the last eight in 22 years.
The first career meeting between Barcelona-trained Murray and Mallorca-born Nadal ran the distance, with Nadal forced to recover after Murray lifted the first set in a tiebreaker.
The win in more than three hours handed the Spaniard further opportunity to make an impression on fast court after winning back-to-back French Open titles.
Nadal has now won his last five five-set matches.
"It was tough, Andy played at a great level," said the winner. "This was an important match for me.
"I'm very happy. I felt good in the fifth, that was important. He had chances early in the fifth, but I was trying to fight every point.
"That's how I won this match."
Murray and Nadal were the only two players to defeat Roger Federer last season.
Russian women's top seed Maria Sharapova overcame fellow Russian Vera Zvonareva 7-5, 6-3 as the teenager lived up to her seeding. Sharapova is guaranteed to take back the number 1 ranking on Monday after the early exits of Amelie Mauresmo and Svetlana Kuznetsova.
"I felt like it was going to be tough," Sharapova said. "I challenged myself, I wanted to see what I could come up with today.
"It was good to go out there and just finish the match. I was definitely lucky to get out of it the way that I did. I was very pleased with the way things went."
Chile's Fernando Gonzalez ended the eight-match win streak of fifth seed James Blake as he dealt the American a 7-5, 6-4, 7-6 (7- 4) defeat.
The success boosted the South American into his first Open round of eight and completed a matched set of Grand Slam quarter-finals for the tenth seed.
Blake had few excuses about why he went off the boil at the crucial moment. "I've gotten better and more mature about not feeling like every single match is the end of the world," said the loser.
"I hope my career won't ever be based on one single match because that would hopefully mean I had a good career, that not one match is going to change that.
'I hope today's doesn't completely change the outlook of my career, that wouldn't be such a good thing."
Blake saved a pair of match points points in the third set before Gonzalez lowered the boom in the tiebreaker.
"He played better today, served better, returned better. I'm sure there's a million reasons, a million excuses I could come up with. That's never been my style, though."
Gonzalez has now won the pair's last four meetings and completed a matched set of quarter-final places at all four of the majors.
Blake, who won the Sydney tournament for the second year running a week ago, remains stalled without a Grand Slam quarter to his name.
German 12th seed Tommy Haas knocked out Argentine David Nalbandian 4-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-3.
The victory was Haas' first Grand Slam victory over a Top 10 player after eight failures.
In women's play, Kim Clijsters and three-time champion Martina Hingis set up their second straight meeting in Melbourne.
Clijsters won her ninth match in a row against Daniela Hantuchova with a 6-1, 7-5 fourth-round defeat of the luckless Slovak. Hingis held off China's Li Na to end the Asian challenge at this year's edition with a 4-6, 6-3, 6-0 comeback.
The experienced Hingis, 26, who won three straight titles at Melbourne Park as a teenager from 1997-1999 and played the next three finals, recovered after dropping the opening set against China's number 1.
The Swiss sixth seed levelled by lifting the second and dominated in the third to pace her victory in one hour, 51 minutes.
Clijsters, set to marry in the summer and retire at age 24 sometime before the end of the year, owns Hingis 3-0 since the Swiss returned to the game a year ago after a three-year retirement.
But past history counts for little to the Belgian, 2005 US Open champion.
"It's always nice if you beat a player, but I've lost to her in the past," warned Clijsters, an overall 4-4 with Hingis.
"Tomorrow's a totally different match, it's the quarter-finals. But that doesn't promise anything. You have to go out there and fight for every point."
The 12th-seeded Anna Chakvetadze kept the Russian revolution alive with her upset of eighth seed Patty Schnyder, which ended on a double-fault 6-4, 6-1. |
posted by ^%&^
@ 7:56 AM
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