Highlights from the 2010 Basel event: Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray make quarters and other news
The tournament of this week has been the event at Basel, and fans all over the world are anxiously following the matches as a prelude to the Paris Masters next week, and the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals in London. Let’s gloss over some of the highlights
and recent developments of the event so far.
The tournament’s defending champion, Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic, reached the quarter finals of the Swiss Indoors event after a straight sets win over Finnish player Jarrko Nieminen. In 2007, Nieminen was a finalist at the Basel event. Djokovic,
who is a second seed at the Swiss tournament, defeated his opponent with a score line of 6-4, 7-6 (8-6), and scored seven aces along with converting one breakpoint during the match. Andy Roddick, currently World Number 9, also followed suit with a straight
sets victory over a previously unknown player, Kazakhstani professional tennis player World Number 36 Andrey Golubev. American player Roddick won the match 6-3, 6-4.
Novak Djokovic, commonly known as Nole, will fight for the title against Dutch player, Robin Haase. World Number 66 Haase reached the quarter final with the defeat of John Isner, the event’s eighth seed – he beat the player 6-2, 6-7 (5-7), 7-5. Djokovic,
who defeated Ernests Gulbis in the event’s first round, first won the tournament trophy in 2009. With last year’s victory he ended the three year winning streak held by World Number 2, tennis legend Roger Federer.
Andy Roddick, meanwhile, will be facing David Nalbandian, an Argentine player who is currently at World Number 29. Roddick last faced Nalbandian in a match in 2006. Nalbandian has also bagged the Swiss Indoors Basel tournament trophy in 2002, and this year
he has defeated two players to reach the semi final: Jan Hajek in the first round, resulting in a score line of 6-3, 6-4 and Croatian player, sixth seed Marin Cilic in a second round match which lasted three sets, ending with a score line of 4-6, 6-4, 6-4.
As well as the Basel debut trophy he won eight years ago, this Argentine player finished as a finalist and runner-up at the St Jakobshalle event three times: in 2003, 2004 and 2008.
Nalbandian has had a difficult time lately, after he missed his annual participation at the Basel event last year due to time taken off because of hip surgery in May 2009. The former World Number 3 seems to have recovered, and says, “I feel good now. Who
can say 100 percent after an operation? But I made a good recovery. I knew that if the surgery worked, I'd be back in tennis. "If not, well... I had no choice, the hip pain was too much.”
Nalbandian also referred to this year’s season as “strange” for him, saying he was unable to play good tennis at the beginning of the year, after his surgery. He says, “I had some muscular problems. But I played well during the American summer and started
feeling better. I'm just trying to play these last two events of the season (Basel and the Paris Masters) well. My goal is to return to the top 10 in 2011."
This loss at Basel ends all chances of Marin Cilic entering the eight-man Finals tournament to be held in three weeks at London. Although he managed to break into the top 10 ranking list for the first time in 2010, he has struggled to remain as good as before
and is now at an unimpressive World Number 15.
In other news, Roger Federer will compete against Radek Stepanek (who defeated Santiago Giraldo in three sets to make it to this match), in the hall where Swiss Federer got his start in the tennis world as a ballboy. In other news, Viktor Troicki, Serbian
pro tennis player, advanced in the tournament after French player Paul-Henri Mathieu forfeited due to back pain.
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