Dubai: American Mardy Fish was the lone seed to fall in the afternoon session as defending champion Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Tomas Berdych all booked their places in the quarter-finals of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships yesterday.
Fish, seeded eighth, who on Monday highlighted the need for faster surfaces on the ATP Tour, went down in straight sets to Mikhail Youzhny 6-2, 7-6.
There were no such hiccups for the other seeds in the top half of the draw as defending champion Djokovic continued improving for a 7-6, 6-3 win over Ukraine's Sergiy Stakhovsky to set up a quarter-final meeting with close friend and countryman Janko Tipsarevic — a 6-7, 6-1, 6-1 winner against Italian Flavio Cipolla.
Berdych set up a mouth-watering last-eight match-up with Murray, dropping just three games for a 6-1, 6-2 win over qualifier Lukas Lacko.
Definitely better
Murray made his third quarter-final in Dubai with a methodical 6-3, 6-4 win over Switzerland's Marco Chiudinelli and then said he was getting better with each match.
"I definitely played better," he said. I still wasn't moving as good as I would have liked, but I served well. Actually I served pretty well yesterday [Tuesday].
"It was more my game from the baseline that was making a lot of mistakes."
Murray allowed very little space or time for his opponent to settle down as the Scot broke in the fifth and held to take the opening set 6-3 in 34 minutes.
In the second, things were even until the ninth game when Murray broke for the only time and then served out set and match 6-4 in an hour and 22 minutes.
Later in the afternoon, Djokovic had the measure of his Ukrainian opponent — ranked 73 places below him.
Stakhovsky seemed to upset the World No 1's rhythm by mixing up his game well.
The two players remained tied all the way to 6-6 with the three-time Dubai champion taking it in the tie-breaker.
In the second set, Stakhovsky broke in the third game for a 2-1 lead, but Djokovic had other ideas as he broke back in the sixth and then served out set and match with an ace down the middle to win in an hour-and-a-half.
Djokovic admitted he was wary of seventh-seed Tipsarevic in today's quarters.
"He's very solid from the baseline," he said.
"I think both shots are very good. When he has time and he steps into the court, he's very dangerous.
"I need to try to be aggressive. I need to try to stay close to the line, that's all. He doesn't have many weaknesses in his game."
