Spain's Rafael Nadal won a Masters Cup round robin shootout with Russian Nikolay Davydenko 5-7 6-4 6-4 on Friday to set up a semi-final against world number one Roger Federer. The world number two took an injury time-out in the deciding set but outlasted the world number three in a fascinating two-and-three-quarter hour duel punctuated with long rallies and fine winners.
Debutant Nadal, who pulled out of last year's event with injury, reached the last four despite losing to James Blake in his opening match. Last year's semi-finalist Davydenko goes home with a 1-2 record in the Gold Group.
American Blake, who plays Spain's Tommy Robredo later on Friday, has already won the group and will meet Argentine David Nalbandian in Saturday's other semi-final. Robredo is already out of contention after two defeats.
Nadal, who had never played Davydenko before, struggled with his service throughout the match - he was only 50 percent for his first serve early in the second set - which allowed the Russian to apply early pressure. The French Open champion made up for this deficiency in other areas of his game and hustled his way to three break points in game seven but his workaholic opponent cranked up his serve to save them all.
Just when it looked like it would need a tiebreak to separate them, Davydenko pulled off a sublime backhand crosscourt winner to take set point and won the opener when Nadal double-faulted.
Nadal broke straight back in the next game when Davydenko netted and survived a five-deuce fourth game to take the set in 49 minutes. The 20-year-old Spaniard needed treatment on the area below his left knee in the third game of the final set but rallied to break for 4-3 four games later.
Davydenko was also tiring in his 32nd tournament of the year and, despite claiming a break point when Nadal was serving for the set, saw his hopes of progressing vanish when he went wide with a forehand.
Comments
Comments are closed.