Mardy Fish continued his hot run of form with a straight-sets win over top-seeded Andy Roddick on Saturday at the Atlanta Championships.
Fish extended his winning streak to nine matches with a 7-6 (7-5), 6-3 upset of Roddick, the No. 9 player in the world. Fish, the No. 6 seed, has not lost a set in the tournament and is closing in on back-to-back tournament wins.
“Confidence is a huge part of our sport,” Fish said. “I’m as confident on the court as I’ve ever been right now.”
PHOTO: AFP
Fish was due to face No. 2 seed and US compatriot John Isner in yesterday’s final. Isner beat South Africa’s Kevin Anderson 6-3, 6-7 (7-9), 6-3 earlier on Saturday.
Following knee surgery last year, Fish has lost 13kg.
“I’ve worked hard and put away a lot of things I enjoy,” Fish said.
Fish said the weight loss “enabled me to work harder, to train harder. We’ve put in the work, and here it is.”
Fish, who won the title in Newport, Rhode Island earlier this month, ended a nine-match losing streak against close friend Roddick.
“It feels good to continue playing well,” Fish said. “I never want to play Andy, to be honest. He’s one of my best friends out here and not only that, he’s beat me nine times in a row.”
Roddick led the first-set tiebreaker 3-2 before Fish won five straight points. Leading the tiebreaker 6-5, Fish came to the net for a winning volley to take the set, and he was relatively untroubled in the second.
Isner had 20 aces, including the clincher on match point, as he survived another challenge to his endurance.
Isner gained fame by winning the longest match in history, a three-day, 183-game match at Wimbledon last month. The Atlanta semi-final presented a different kind of fatigue.
The temperature was 36°C for the start of the match.
On the hard-court surface, the reading reached 64°C.
“The conditions were just brutal,” Isner said. “It definitely took a lot out of me.”
“Even though I am exhausted, I am able to use my energy smartly,” he said. “I am able to keep plugging away until I get my break eventually.”
Anderson said he went through six or seven shirts and had one drying on a fan if needed. But shirts were not the only concern.
“I was sweating through my shoes,” Anderson said. “I was slipping quite a bit.”
Isner beat the 2m Anderson in a match of two of the three tallest players in the ATP World Tour’s top 100 rankings.
The two were college rivals. Isner beat Anderson as Georgia beat Illinois to win the 2007 collegiate championship, and the American leads 3-1 in their pro careers.
Isner saved each of the seven break points he faced in the match.
However he couldn’t hold serve when leading 7-6 in the second-set tiebreaker. Anderson won two straight points and then took the set.
Isner broke in the eighth game of the deciding set, and then served it out for victory.
■GERMAN OPEN
AP, HAMBURG, GERMANY
Jurgen Melzer of Austria was due to play Andrey Golubev of Kazakhstan yesterday for the German Open title.
The third-seeded Melzer beat Andreas Seppi of Italy 6-4, 6-2, while the No. 82-ranked Golubev defeated Florian Mayer of Germany 7-6 (6), 6-4 on Saturday to reach his first career final.
Melzer was a semi-finalist in Hamburg in 2004. Seppi had beaten Melzer in their previous two clay-court encounters.
■SLOVENIA OPEN
AP, PORTOROZ, SLOVENIA
Russian Anna Chakvetadze reached her first final in nearly two years when she beat local star Polona Hercog 0-6, 6-2, 6-2 in the Slovenia Open on Saturday.
She was due to play for the title against Swede Johanna Larsson, who advanced to her first WTA final when Russian Ksenia Pervak retired with a wrist injury while trailing 6-2, 1-0.
Chakvetadze won the last of her seven WTA titles in 2008. A top-five player in 2007, she’s fallen to 103 in the rankings.
The seventh-seeded Hercog, playing before her home crowd, said she missed her chances. Besides, Chakvetadze was forcing a quick rhythm, said the only seed to reach the last four.
Hercog raced through the first set and had a chance to break in the second game of the second, but missed and Chakvetadze ground it out to the end.
For Larsson, ranked 84th, it has been a blissful month: She reached her first WTA quarter-final last week in Prague, then her first semis and final in Portoroz.
On her way to the final, she ousted eighth-seeded compatriot Sofia Arvidsson and third-seeded Anastasia Pavlyuchenko in the quarter-finals.
■GASTEIN LADIES
AP, BAD GASTEIN, AUSTRIA
Timea Bacsinszky of Switzerland rallied to beat Austria’s Yvonne Meusburger 1-6, 6-4, 6-3 to reach the Gastein Ladies final.
In her first final of the season, the second-seeded Bacsinszky will face either Alize Cornet or Julia Goerges. Their semi-final was canceled due to rain and rescheduled for yesterday morning. The final was due to be played later yesterday.
The 52nd-ranked Swiss player could win her second career title after Luxembourg in last year.
Bacsinszky lost all four service games in the opening set when she struggled to find the right length in her ground strokes.
Bacsinszky, who was beaten by Meusburger at the Australian Open in January, took control afterward. She won the second set after saving two break points at 5-4.
In the decider, Bacsinszky was 4-3 up and 15-40 down on her serve when she suddenly left the court, claiming that rain had made the clay surface too slippery.
However, the umpire persuaded her to play on. Bacsinszky came back after a couple of minutes, won that game and broke Meusburger in the next with a return winner on her first match point.
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