World No. 1 Rafael Nadal set up a semifinal showdown with Andy Murray after winning his third successive match at the season-ending ATP World Tour Finals in London on Friday.The Spaniard overcame sixth seed Tomas Berdych 7-6 (7-3) 6-1 to repeat his victory over the Czech in the Wimbledon final in July.
Third seed Novak Djokovic will play No. 2 Roger Federer in Saturday evening's second semifinal after handing American Andy Roddick his third successive defeat in Friday's closing match of the round-robin stage.
The 24-year-old, who needed to win just one set to progress, completed his seventh straight win over Berdych despite losing his cool with an umpiring call.
Nadal was infuriated when Berdych was allowed to challenge a decision in the 12th game and was given the point as his backhand was shown to touch the line and not be long.
Nadal calmed himself down after a long, heated exchange with the umpire and held serve before winning the tie-break comfortably and then racing away with the second set to reach the last four of the event for the first time.
Behind the scenes at the ATP Finals
"It was a very important victory because every day I'm playing a little better and today I played a great match. It's going to be a really, really difficult match against Andy," he told the crowd after ending Berdych's hopes of progressing.
Nadal has never won an indoor hardcourt tournament, and failed to win a set at the O2 Arena last year.
He has beaten Murray eight times in their 12 meetings, but lost to the British player on hardcourt in Toronto in August and retired hurt on the same surface during their Australian Open last-16 clash in January.
Nadal won their first two hardcourt meetings in 2007 but they went 2-2 last year.
In Friday's final Group A match, Djokovic needed to win only one set to earn a clash with Group B winner Federer.
Roddick, who lost his first two games, needed to win in straight sets to go through as runner-up. He had won his past four encounters with Djokovic, three of them being two-setters.
But it was the Serbian who prevailed with the minimum of fuss, winning 6-2 6-3 as he suffered none of the contact lens problems that hampered him in his earlier defeat by Nadal.
"It's definitely a great achievement to get to the semifinals. It's great for the tournament to have the top four guys in the semifinals," the 23-year-old, who walked out to the court wearing a joke eye patch, told the crowd afterwards.
source : http://edition.cnn.com/2010/SPORT/tennis/11/26/tennis.nadal.djokovic.berdych.roddick/index.html?hpt=Sbin
No comments:
Post a Comment