Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray were sent crashing out of the Cincinnati Masters, falling to a pair of unseeded players during a bruising day of tennis at the hardcourt tournament on Friday. American Mardy Fish and Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus played the role of giant killers, knocking out the first and fourth seeds by outlasting them in three set marathons.
Unseeded Baghdatis posted the biggest surprise of the day, shocking world number one Nadal 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 in a quarter-final match that lasted two hours, 32 minutes. Fish did likewise to Scot Murray, winning 6-7 (7/9), 6-1, 7-6 (7/5) in a match that lasted two hours, 56 minutes - the tournament's longest. The afternoon match was played under gruelling conditions as temperatures on the court reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
In another quarter-final match, Swiss superstar Roger Federer beat Russian Nikolay Davydenko in straight sets 6-4, 7-5 and former world number one Andy Roddick breezed past Novak Djokovic 6-4, 7-5. Top seed Nadal committed 30 unforced errors in the first two sets and double-faulted on break point in the ninth game of the third set, allowing the Cypriot to serve for the match.
Baghdatis clinched his first victory in seven previous attempts against Nadal when the Spaniard fired a forehand into the net to register his 35th unforced error. Baghdatis finished with 18 aces to Nadal's four and committed only 22 unforced errors. Roddick defeated Serb second seed Djokovic in an 83 minute quarter-final match. Roddick hammered eight aces against Djokovic who appeared in the last two Cincinnati finals, losing to Federer last year and Murray in 2008.
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