Finland's Jarkko Nieminen cashed in on Novak Djokovic's shaky forehand to send the top seed crashing out of the Sydney International on Friday. The 40th-ranked Nieminen savoured one of his finest results on the ATP Tour to reach Saturday's Sydney final with a fighting 6-4, 7-6 (7/3) win in one hour and 40 minutes.
Left-handed Nieminen, who only reached the semi-finals on a walkover from injured Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, will play Argentina's David Nalbandian in the final. Nalbandian, who has a 6-4 win record over Nieminen, reached his 20th career ATP final with an untroubled straight sets win over Frenchman Richard Gasquet in the other semi-final.
"Obviously he's not that confident at the moment that he was in the end of last year," Nieminen said of Djokovic. "I just tried to play aggressive. He was hitting some unforced errors from the forehand side, so I tried to stay aggressive and keep the ball to his forehand side." Nieminen is looking for his second career title in his ninth ATP final against Nalbandian.
"We've played at least ten times. I beat him few times and he beat me many times as well," he said. "This is my ninth final and I've only won once. At least I did it once, so I don't have the pressure anymore to win the first one." Djokovic had his chances, with two set points on Nieminen's serve at 5-4 in the second set, but he was unable to convert them and Nieminen was too consistent for the young Serbian in the decisive tiebreaker.
"My forehand didn't really work today, and you could see in all the important moments he served to my forehand and I couldn't put the ball in. It was just a bad day," Djokovic said. "It's always great to win a tournament prior to a grand slam, but he was better today.