Dubai: The top four seeds were joined by a lucky loser and a qualifier in the quarter-finals of the Dubai Duty Free Men’s Open at the Dubai Tennis Stadium on Wednesday.
Top seed and four-time champion Novak Djokovic took exactly one hour to pack off Kazakhstan’s Andrey Golubev 6-1, 6-2, while second seed and six-time defending champion Roger Federer took time to settle in before a 6-4, 6-3 win against Spain’s Fernando Verdasco.
Earlier in the day, third seed Andy Murray showed total composure to power away with a 6-0, 6-2 win over Portugal’s Joao Sousa, while fourth seed Tomas Berdych battled for nearly two and a half hours for a 7-6 (4), 5-7, 6-0 win over Italian Simone Bolelli.
In Thursday’s quarter-finals, Murray will get things running on centre court when he takes on lucky loser Borna Coric at 3 pm, while Berdych will follow in his match against Sergiy Stakhovsky.
Federer will kick-start the second session at 7 pm with his encounter against Richard Gasquet, while Novak Djokovic will try to secure his place in the last four when he takes on qualifier Marsel Ilhan of Turkey in the last quarter-final of the evening.
Court 1 will host the doubles quarter-finals with Robert Lindstedt and Marcin Matkowski taking on Jean-Julien Rojer and Horia Tecau, followed by the match between Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi and Nenad Zimonjic facing Jeremy Chardy and Lukas Rosol.
Qualifiers Jamie Murray and John Peers will see if they can continue with their dream run here as they take on the Indo-Canadian duo of Rohan Bopanna and Daniel Nestor, while the Bryan brothers Bob and Mike will try and make their long trip count on their Dubai debut as they line up against Dominic Inglot and Florin Mergea.
Federer was pleased with the way he kept control in the match. “It’s more about trying to win a match and move on in the draw and hopefully play for the title. I’m very happy how the match went. I think it was a good quality match from my side. I think Fernando played well for spells, but I think I was quite consistent in the two breaks maybe I get or maybe avoidable to some extent, but then Fernando is a shot-maker and he takes it out of your racquet sometimes. So I’m still very, very pleased the way I played out here tonight,” Federer said.
