AFP/Shanghai
Novak Djokovic beat Bernard Tomic and Andy Murray overcame heated rival Tomas Berdych as the world number one and two set up a Shanghai Masters semi-final to savour.
Djokovic had to work in a tough first set before he blew Tomic away, winning 7-6 (8/6), 6-1, and Murray saw off Berdych 6-1, 6-3 to make it three straight victories over the Czech this year.
Earlier, Rafael Nadal’s resurgence moved ahead with a 6-2, 6-1 win over Stan Wawrinka, setting up a clash with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga who was taken to three sets by Kevin Anderson.
Top-ranked Djokovic was pushed all the way by Tomic in a thrilling opening set but after he edged the tiebreak 8/6, it was plain sailing as the Australian capitulated.
“I think physically maybe he felt a bit exhausted. Last night he played three sets. He finished after midnight. Maybe that has influenced a little bit his game in the second set,” Djokovic said.
“Then again, I’ve started to read his serve a little bit better, started to move him around the court. The first game of the second set was crucial, I think, making that break.”
Tomic has a reputation for quick losses and was once dubbed “Tomic the tank engine”. Last year he lost the fastest recorded match 6-0, 6-1 to Jarkko Nieminen in 28 minutes, 20 seconds in Miami.
But the 23-year-old, who had a late-night tussle with Richard Gasquet on Thursday, has been rising up the rankings and he is now projected to reach a career high of 18.
“For me it was very, very important this first set—after, I think I was dead,” Tomic said. “I was trying to stay with him but he looked so fresh and so energetic.”
Murray and Berdych, who is trained by the Briton’s former coach, played a combustible four-set match at this year’s Australian Open but their 13th career meeting turned out to be one-sided.
Murray owned the Czech in the first set and it wasn’t much different in the second as he moved quickly into a semi-final against Djokovic, a fellow two-time winner in Shanghai.
“Andy has... been on the top of the men’s game for so many years, a Grand Slam winner, Olympic gold medallist, somebody that understands how to play on a big occasion,” Djokovic said.
Elsewhere, Nadal easily beat fourth-ranked Wawrinka to bring up his first win over a top-five player in more than a year and extend a hot streak after he also reached last week’s China Open final.
Spain’s Nadal was on court for just 64 minutes against the Swiss, who was also feeling the effects of his marathon three-setter against Marin Cilic late the previous night.
The French Open champion, who won last week in Tokyo, made 34 unforced errors and was on target with just 45 percent of his first serves as he folded meekly.
“Today I was just struggling a little bit. It’s that simple. Against Nadal you cannot do anything if you’re not 100 percent,” Wawrinka said.
For Nadal, hours of extra work on the practice court look to be paying off as after a tough year, he fights to recapture the form that brought him 14 Grand Slam titles. “Being in the semi-finals is a great result for me. I didn’t play any semi-finals on hard court this year, now I am playing (them) two weeks in a row,” he said.
Venus storms through to Hong Kong semi-finals
Venus Williams took just an hour to secure her place in the semi-finals of the Hong Kong Open yesterday in a 6-1, 6-1 victory against a lacklustre Alize Cornet.
The French player, who beat Williams’ sister Serena in their last three meets, struggled to gain a foothold in a match dominated by the seven-time Grand Slam winner.
Williams, 35, unleashed power serves and even gained resigned applause from her opponent, 10 years her junior, after whipping over a cross-court return to go 5-1 up in the second.
“It’s never easy. We had some tough games there,” Williams said as she hopes to claw her way into the eight-player WTA Finals in Singapore later this month. She is currently 11th in the Road to Singapore rankings after a resurgent season and Hong Kong is her last chance to get the points she needs. “I’ve been under a lot of pressure in my career, playing big moments, all that experience hopefully will help me.”
If Williams reaches the final in Hong Kong she will have enough points to make the top eight for Singapore, the WTA said on its website. But she has to get past former world number one Jelena Jankovic who eased through her quarter-final against sixth seed Daria Gavrilova 6-1, 6-1.
World number 10 Angelique Kerber, the top seed left in the tournament, took two hours to edge out French player Caroline Garcia. She eventually took the quarter-final 7-5, 6-3 with fast returns and deft touches at the net in a match which saw a succession of long deuce wrangles.
Kerber will meet fifth seed Samantha Stosur in the semi-finals after the Australian was given a scare by Britain’s Heather Watson.
Radwanska sets up last four clash with Pliskova in Tianjin
World number six Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland beat Russia’s Elizaveta Kulichkova at the Tianjin Open yesterday, setting up a semi-final clash with Czech Karolina Pliskova.
Second seed Radwanska won 7-6, 6-2 in an hour and a half, while third seed Pliskova beat Hungary’s Timea Babos 6-3, 6-2.
Fifth seed Kristina Mladenovic of France was knocked out, however, by Serbia’s Bojana Jovanovski 6-4, 4-6, 6-3.
The winner of the Radwanska-Pliskova match will play either Jovanovski or Danka Kovinic of Montenegro, both unseeded.
The $500,000 (440,000-euro) WTA tournament has seen a run of upsets, the most spectacular when Italian top seed Flavia Pennetta, who won the US Open last month, went out to a player ranked more than 400 places below her, Ukraine’s Lyudmyla Kichenok.
Federer won’t take up wild card invitation to Vienna
Vienna officials yesterday admitted defeat in their late bid to lure Roger Federer into the field at next week’s Erste Bank Open. Tournament boss Herwig Straka had rolled out the red carpet for the Swiss after Federer lost in his opening match in Shanghai to Spanish outsider Albert Ramos. But the world number three, who won the Austrian indoor title in 2002 and 2003, turned down the offer of a wild card, with the Swiss preferring to concentrate on his home appearance the following week in Basel.
Vienna will make its debut as an ATP 500 event with a field headed by Spain’s David Ferrer, Canadian Milos Raonic and South African Kevin Anderson, a trio of top 10 players.
