Rafael Nadal of Spain reacts after winning his match against Lukas Lacko of Slovakia at the Qatar Open tennis tournament yesterday. Pictures: Jayan Orma
World No 1 Rafael Nadal and World No 2 Roger Federer huffed and puffed their way to victory for a place in the quarterfinals of the Qatar ExxonMobil Open here at the Khalifa Tennis and Squash Complex here yesterday.
While Nadal had to dwell deep for a tough 7-6 (3), 0-6, 6-3 win over Lukas Lacko of Slovakia, Federer had to battle his way past compatriot Marco Chiudinelli for a 7-6, (5), 7-5 victory.
The fact that he knew the Swiss ace from the days when they were ball boys at the Swiss Indoors might have given Chiudinelli a confidence boost going into the crunch match. And he gave it everything right from the word go.
So fierce was the contest that the first set went on serves until the 12th game and both were on level terms at 5-5 at one stage in the tie-break. But an unforced error from Chiudinelli allowed Federer a much need breakthrough. Leading 6-5, Federer then sent in a fine return down the line to seal the first set.
Chiudinelli, despite letting Federer escape in the first set, remained undeterred and broke Federer in the fourth game to go 3-1 up. The 29-yr-old then held his serve in the fifth to widen the lead to 4-5. Federer, however, again showed his immense fighting qualities by breaking back in the seventh and then held his serve in the eighth to regain parity.
After going on level terms till the 10 game, the decisive break came in the 11th game for Federer. He then held his serve in the 12th without much of a fuss to seal the absorbing contest in his favour.
“The first set was in his control, and if he serves a couple of good serves, being calm doesn’t help you much, you know. It was a close first set. Second set was pretty much similar, same story. I was trying to play, you know, sort of okay tennis. It was really difficult today, under the circumstances, and I’m happy the match is in the past and I can look forward,” said a visibly pleased Federer who meets Viktor Troicki of Serbia next. Troicki made his way to the quarters with a 6-3, 6-1 win over Teymuraz Gabashvili of Russia.
Nadal also found the going tough in the encounter against Lacko. The Spaniard had to do the catching up after being broken early in the third game of the first set. Though he quickly got his act together and broke back in the next game, Lucko stayed in the match by going on level terms till the 12th game.
However, some unforced error saw him lose the tiebreak at 7-3. Lucko made an amazing comeback into the match by winnings six games in a row. It was the 10th time in 575 career matches that Nadal lost a set 6-0. Nadal won four games in a row in the third set and later despite a break in the sixth game broke back to seal the set and the match at 6-3. It’s only the second time in Nadal’s career that he won a match after losing a set 6-0. The last time he did that was at the 2005 Monte Carlo final against Argentine Guillermo Coria.
“It was tough match, especially the second set. It is good to get through but I have a doubles match tonight again and that would be tiring,” said Nadal.
Third seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France , however, did not have to bother much against Sergei Bubka of Ukraine. He registered a straight set 6-2, 6-4 to book his place in the quarterfinals.
In the late night match, defending champion Nikolay Davydenko of Russia defeated Jarkko Nieminen of Finland 6-4, 7-5 in an encounter that lasted for 1 hour and 35 minutes.
Davenko will now play Ivo Karlovic of Croatia, who had a hard fought 7-6 (5), 6-7 (4), 7-6 (2) win over Philipp Kohlschreiber of Germany yesterday.
