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DUBAI: 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’s No. 1 from the United
States scored a tense and tenaciously chiseled 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.
The match hinged on one point in the tiebreaker
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.
Afterward 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,” said Djokovic.
“There are 10,000 people in there and I
didn’t hear it. It was an important point.”
From 6-4 up, Roddick lost the next rally but won
the second set point at 6-5 as Djokovic, from a useful position, hit
a forehand drive wide.
“I don’t think anyone heard it,” Roddick
said of the umpire’s let call.
“This is new information for me. I don’t
know what to tell you.”
The second set was also very tight, with Roddick,
who returned serve soundly and played some well constructed rallies,
making the crucial break in the penultimate game.
“I didn’t use my opportunities when they
were given to me. But it could have gone the other way if I had won
the first set,” said Djokovic.
“I was nervous because we were playing on a
very fast court and he is going to rely on his service. I had to get
back his service as much as I could, which is why I was nervous.”
But the best Djokovic could manage against the
fastest serve in the world was two break points in the first set;
Roddick has yet to drop serve during this tournament.
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 comeback from 3-5 down
to snatch an audacious 6-4, 4-6, 7-5 victory over Nikolay Davydenko,
the world’s number five 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.
-- AFP
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