Davydenko, Ferrer on the move
2008-05-13 19:42
Hamburg - Nikolay Davydenko and
David Ferrer moved smartly into the third round of the Hamburg
Masters on Tuesday, while Tommy Robredo came back from the brink
to win a first-round thriller against Philipp Kohlschreiber.
Davydenko, the Russian fourth seed, helped himself to a 6-4
6-1 victory over Croatia's Ivan Ljubicic, while Spain's Ferrer,
seeded fifth, was equally impressive in a 6-3 6-3 win over Ivo
Minar of the Czech Republic.
Robredo, who had the best win of his career when he took the
title in Hamburg in 2006, lost the first set and was two points
away from defeat when he fell a break down in the second-set
tie-break.
The Spaniard recovered, thanks to a couple of poor serves
from German hope Kohlschreiber, and held his nerve at the end of
the decider to take his third match point and win 2-6 7-6 6-3.
Though that was the outstanding match, the best individual
display on the red clay came from Davydenko, who served
beautifully and took advantage of a stream of unforced errors
from Ljubicic to seal an easy win in one hour 24 minutes.
The world number four has one Masters Series title to his
name already this season, after beating Nadal in the final on a
hard court in Miami, and he has made a decent start to the
clay-court season.
"Playing in Miami was much easier for me than playing on
clay but maybe winning that tournament has helped mentally,"
Davydenko said at a news conference.
"My tennis is still the same but when you feel good you try
to make more winners."
Easy win
In another second-round match early on Tuesday, Spain's
Fernando Verdasco had an even easier win as he saw off Frenchman
Michael Llodra 6-2 6-0.
Two first-round matches were cut short by injury in what has
become a familiar story over the last few weeks in Europe.
Luis Horna of Peru and Kristof Vliegen of Belgium were the
latest players forced to pull out against, respectively, the
Italian Potito Starace and Jose Acasuso of Argentina.
At last week's Masters in Rome both semi-finals were decided
by retirements through injury.
Rafael Nadal has led players' complaints about this year's
calendar, which has had three clay-court Masters Series events,
plus Barcelona, crammed into four weeks.
"Maybe it's the ATP we have to thank for giving us a
calendar like this," Nadal told reporters when asked about the
run of retirements.
Top seeds Roger Federer and Nadal are not in action until
Wednesday.