TENNIS – The quarter finals of the Aegon Championships at Queen’s club ruled out one of the main contenders for the title, as Tomas Berdych suffered a major upset by Feliciano Lopez. From London, Giulio Gasparin
Solid win for the first seed instead, as Stanislas Wawrinka needed only two sets to pass past dark horse Marinko Matosevic.
A comeback from one set down gave the semifinal ticket to Radek Stepanek, who upset the seventh seed Kevin Anderson, backing up his win over defending champion Andy Murray.
Grigor Dimitrov did not need to play any point at all to pass his round, Alexandr Dolgopolov was indeed forced to withdraw due to a right thigh injury.
In the first match of the day, Stepanek was called to back up his win over Murray, but things did not start too well for the Czech.
Anderson stepped on court showing the best of his repertoire giving no chance to Stepanek for a reply.
In few minutes he wrapped up a 6-1 and it seemed likely that the match could have easily flown to his favour.
The experienced Czech did not give up though, but slowly started to find his game and solutions against the firepower of the South African.
After battling hard in the second set, Stepanek levelled the score going into the third with the momentum all by his side.
Anderson suddenly look spent and he allowed the Czech executing his game as he wished, which led to the final score of 1-6 6-3 6-2 for Stepanek.
His opponent for a place in the final will be Lopez, who played a stunning match to overcome Berdych in the battle of the only tournament-winners on grass left in the draw.
The Spaniard, fully supported by the British crowd, gave a show of all his grass court’s skills from serve (54 aces this week!) to slice, volleys to chip and charges.
Despite looking the one in control of the match after the 6-4 win in the first set, Lopez failed to find a decisive break in the second set and suddenly things were about to go wrong for him in the tiebreak.
Berdych found an important 6-3 lead, but the 10th seed did not let the set points discourage him as he came up on top of his game to save these three and a fourth, before closing on the first match point.
With the knowledge of being in the semis already, Dimitrov watched his next opponent, Wawrinka, dealing with the only unseeded player left in the draw.
Matosevic showed all the reasons why he got this far, but the Swiss found the right answers at the right time, despite looking not as impressive as yesterday.
The Australian Open champion has curiously never lost this year whenever he reached the quarter finals of a tournament: Chennai, Melbourne and Monte Carlo.
