Safin Through to Meet Federer
Once the world number one Marat Safin of Russia reached yesterday the Wimbledon semi-finals for the first time in his career. His victim was Spain’s Feliciano Lopez, who yielded to the Russian in four sets. Safin next plays five-time champion Roger Federer.
The yesterday’s battle was historic both for Marat Safin and Feliciano Lopez – the victory would advance the winner to the Wimbledon semi-finals for the first time in career. For Safin, however, even the quarter-final result wasn’t bad at all. Once two-time Grand Slam winner, Marat had progressed that far at Wimbledon far back in 2001.
Safin wasn’t the favorite of the battle, he had lost five of six face-to-face matches against the less brilliant, perhaps, but far more stable Spaniard.
Marat’s performance wasn’t inspiring at first. He was too nervous to play good tennis at the beginning, always throwing his racket and sending balls to the sky. He never broke in the first set, losing to confident Lopez 3-6.
But the second set saw another Safin. Marat managed to improve the first serve hits from 50 percent to 68 percent, reducing the number of unforced errors at the same time. The tempo slowed down with the fans given the unique chance to see the Roland Garros manner of playing at Wimbledon. Safin, who manifested the patience of unusual extent, and managed to give an edge at a good time, won the second set 7-5.
He was dominating in the third set, which he won at the tie-break (7-6 (7-1)) and finished the Spaniard in the fourth one with the score of 6-3. Safin next plays the grass king Roger Federer, who easily saw off Croatia's Mario Ancic in another quarter-final standoff.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of July 03, 2008
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