Djokovic on song against Golubev WORLD NO 1 DISMANTLES KAZAKH OPPONENT TO JOIN MURRAY AND BERDYCH IN QUARTERS
World number one and top seed Novak Djokovic led Andy Murray and Tomas Berdych into the quarter-finals of the Dubai Duty Free Men’s Open yesterday.
Winner here on four previous occasions, Djokovic took exactly one hour to dismantle Andrey Golubev of Kazakhstan 6-1, 6-2 to set up a quarterfinal meeting with either sixth seed Feliciano Lopez or qualifier Marsel Ilhan.
Djokovic seemed to be in a hurry as he won the opening set in just 24 minutes. Djokovic broke in the third and fifth games to serve out set and match with comparative ease.
The Serb was pleased with his performance. “It was just a much better performance than yesterday. Hopefully I can improve as the tournament progresses,” Djokovic hoped.
Earlier, Murray and Berdych booked their spots in the last eight stages in vastly contrasting styles. Murray completed a 6-0, 6-2 win over Portugal’s Joao Sousa in less than an hour, but Berdych had to battle for nearly two-and-a-half hours for a 7-6 (7), 5-7, 6-0 win over Italian Simone Bolelli.
Frenchman Richard Gasquet caused an upset with a 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (6) win over seventh seed Roberto Bautista Agut for a run-in either against defending champion Roger Federer or Fernando Verdasco.
Berdych also celebrated his entry into the 500 wins club with the victory against Bolelli. The win made him the eighth active player on the ATP World Tour and the third one from the Czech Republic — after Ivan Lendl and Tomas Smid — to claim at least 500 match wins.
The list is led by former world No 1 Federer, who was expected to take his winning tally to 1,004 later yesterday provided he got the better of Verdasco.
Murray meant business from the start as he broke Sousa in the first and third games for an easy 4-0 lead in good time. A third break and Murray eased his way to a 6-0 stamp of authority in just 21 minutes with the statistics saying it all: Sousa recorded 19 unforced errors compared to five committed by the British player.
Murray started the second set with a break, but saw the Portuguese lad coming up with some resistance as he held for the first time to trail 1-2. But that was as far as he could go as Murray got the job done and dusted in 58 minutes and take his head-to-head record to 5-0 against the Portuguese.
“Today I thought I just picked the right shots and played the right way when he was struggling. I didn’t give him any free points. I didn’t make sort of needless errors. I wasn’t just going for shots just because I was up 4-0.
“I thought I made good decisions and didn’t give him anything for free, and he was getting more frustrated because he couldn’t get any free points and then was going for more and more shots and obviously making more errors because of it,” Murray said.
Sergiy Stakhovsky, Richard Gasquet and lucky loser Borna Coric were among the others booking their spots in the quarter-finals after the early matches.
Stakhovsky got the better of Denis Istomin 6-4, 3-6, 6-4, Gasquet laboured to a 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (6) win over Roberto Bautista-Agut and Coric became one of the lucky losers to advance so deep after Baghdatis retired with the score tied 4-4 on the deciding third set tie-breaker.
Today’s quarter-finals look set to be engrossing affairs with Djokovic possibly facing Feliciano Lopez, Berdych taking on Stakhovski, Murray up against lucky loser Coric and Frenchman Gasquet awaiting the winner of the late night match between six-time defending champion Federer and Verdasco.