Andy Roddick, playing with a new lease of life, caused his second successive upset to reach the final of the Dubai Open on Friday when he added Novak Djokovic's scalp to his victory over Rafael Nadal.
The former world No. 1 from the US, now seeded sixth, scored a tense and tenaciously chiselled out 7-6 (7/5), 6-3 victory over Djokovic, the third-seeded Australian Open champion from Serbia.
It followed another straight sets win on Thursday over Nadal, the second-seeded French Open champion from Spain.
PHOTO: AFP
The match hinged on one point in the tie-breaker and one break of serve in the second set, and might have taken a different course but for a mix-up two points from the end of the first set.
The umpire called a Roddick ace as a let, and repeated the call, but both players changed sides anyway, ready for the next point.
This decided the umpire to allow himself to be over-ruled, and he called the score as 6-4 and set point to Roddick, instead of 5-4, first serve.
Most people assumed both players had disagreed with the call, and that Djokovic was sportingly acknowledging it.
Afterwards however each of them claimed they had not heard the let call.
"The umpire is supposed to speak loud, not as though he were speaking to a mouse," Djokovic said. "There are 10,000 people in there and I didn't hear it. It was an important point."
Inevitably it was suggested to Roddick that his surge in form might have been related to last week's split with Jimmy Connors, the legendary former player who had been his coach for the last year and a half.
"I don't know if this week is about Jimmy. I talked to him last night and he had a lot of things to say," Roddick said. "But for a long time it has been John [Roddick, his brother], Doug [Spreen] and me on the road. It was nice hearing his voice, but the grit of it was John, Doug and me."
In the final, Roddick will face Feliciano Lopez, the enigmatic Spaniard who had previously won only one match in five months, but who now completed his third victory over a top 10 player in a week.
Lopez made a last ditch come-back from 3-5 down to snatch an audacious 6-4, 4-6, 7-5 victory over Nikolay Davydenko, the world No. 5 from Russia.
Nor was it a coincidence that Lopez should return to such spectacular form here -- it is the same place where the first of his four finals happened, four years ago.
■ CANAS FORGES AHEAD
AFP, LAS VEGAS
Fourth seeded Argentine Guillermo Canas rolled over Amer Delic 6-4, 6-4 in the quarter-finals of the ATP Las Vegas tournament, putting an end to a string of upsets.
Canas advanced to his first semi-final of the season with the straight-sets win on Friday.
The world No. 20, Canas took advantage of 29 unforced errors and easily dispatched of the 126th-ranked American Delic.
Canas next will face the US' Sam Querrey, who advanced with a 7-5, 6-2 victory over Frenchman Julien Benneteau.
■ WILLIAMS VS WILLIAMS
AFP, BANGALORE, INDIA
Serena and Venus Williams were to clash in the Bangalore Open semi-finals yesterday with their family rivalry tied at seven wins each in their 14 career meetings.
The sisters, playing for the first time on Indian soil, were excited over their semi-final showdown.
Second seed Venus brushed aside Vera Zvonareva of Russia 6-4, 6-3 in her quarter-final before her sister Serena, seeded third, crushed another Russian Anastasia Rodionova 6-1, 6-4.
Meanwhile, Yan Zi of China upset world No. 4 Jelena Jankovic of Serbia in three sets to storm into the semi-finals.
Yan, ranked 54th in the world, won 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 as the top-seeded Jankovic struggled with a shoulder and neck injury during the third set of the quarter-final match.
Yan, looking for her second career title, was to take on fourth seed Patty Schnyder of Switzerland in yesterday's semi-final.
RECORD DEFEAT: The Shanghai-based ‘Oriental Sports Daily’ said the drubbing was so disastrous, and taste so bitter, that all that is left is ‘numbness’ Chinese soccer fans and media rounded on the national team yesterday after they experienced fresh humiliation in a 7-0 thrashing to rivals Japan in their opening Group C match in the third phase of Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. The humiliation in Saitama on Thursday against Asia’s top-ranked team was China’s worst defeat in World Cup qualifying and only a goal short of their record 8-0 loss to Brazil in 2012. Chinese President Xi Jinping once said he wanted China to host and even win the World Cup one day, but that ambition looked further away than ever after a
‘KHELIFMANIA’: In the weeks since the Algerian boxer won gold in Paris, national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women In the weeks since Algeria’s Imane Khelif won an Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing, athletes and coaches in the North African nation say national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women. Khelif’s image is practically everywhere, featured in advertisements at airports, on highway billboards and in boxing gyms. The 25-year-old welterweight’s success in Paris has vaulted her to national hero status, especially after Algerians rallied behind her in the face of uninformed speculation about her gender and eligibility to compete. Amateur boxer Zougar Amina, a medical student who has been practicing for a year, called Khelif an
Taiwanese badminton superstar Lee Yang broke down in tears after publicly retiring from the sport on Sunday. The two-time Olympic gold medalist held a retirement ceremony at the Taipei Arena after the final matches of the Taipei Open. Accompanied by friends, family and former badminton partners, Lee burst into tears while watching a video celebrating key moments in his professional sporting career that also featured messages from international players such as Malaysia’s Teo Ee Yi, Hong Kong’s Tang Chun-man, and Indonesia’s Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan. “I hope that in the future when the world thinks about me, they will
GOING GLOBAL: The regular season fixture is part of the football league’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the sport to international destinations The US National Football League (NFL) breaks new ground in its global expansion strategy tomorrow when the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers face off in the first-ever grid-iron game staged in Brazil. For one night only, the land of Pele and ‘The Beautiful Game’ will get a rare glimpse into the bone-crunching world of American football as the Packers and Eagles collide at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena, the 46,000-seat home of soccer club Corinthians. The regular season fixture is part of the NFL’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the US’ most popular sport to new territories following previous international fixtures
RSS