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Safin shuts out a listless Djokovic

Nirmal Shekar

Ivanovic survives scare; Paes-Dlouhy take the tough route to advance

London: If you believed popular myth, the cheapest flight fuel in sport is hunger. Many a fabled take-off has been energised by nothing more than an athlete’s burning desire.

If only life were that simple!

In the last few days here, in the 122nd Wimbledon championships, much has been said and written about a man — Novak Djokovic — who has been touted as the finest example of this sort of flight of fantasy.

In just over two hours on a lovely summer afternoon on the centre court, an enigmatic, outrageously talented Russian — Marat Safin — showed how utterly simplistic and flawed such a reasoning is.

Safin, aged 28 and world ranked No.75, is given to flirting with greatness once every few years. On Wednesday, he chose his moment perfectly to show how still-very-green the third-seeded Djokovic was on the slippery grass of the All England Lawn Tennis Club.

Finest moment

The Russian two-time Grand Slam champion’s stunning giant-killing act made sure that the much-awaited semifinal between Roger Federer and the Serbian-who-would-be-king will never take place — at least, not in this tournament.

With a breathtaking exhibition of controlled aggression from the back of the court, Safin, who won the second round contest 6-4, 7-6(3), 6-2 in two hours and one minute, brought up his finest moment on a surface which he had always insisted was best left to cows.

It wasn’t as if Djokovic’s desire had diminished. It is just that hunger also can seldom do the job. On this day, Djokovic simply did not have the tools to deal with Safin’s brilliance on a grass court.

“The pressure was on him. He is trying to become the No. 1 at the end of the year,” Safin said with a wan smile, moments after closing out the match on his third matchpoint. “From me, nobody expects anything.”

When he says ’nobody’ that is really nobody, for it includes himself. And, Safin was merely holding a mirror to his soul, or neural hard-wiring if you please.

What you can confidently expect, of course, is this: if that great literary master, Fyodor Dostoevsky, were still writing today, you’d find a Safin-like character in one or other of his works.

Pure one-off

Complex, intriguing, torn by existentialist angst, haunted by inner demons one moment and unabashedly bacchanalian the next, motivated forever by contradictory impulses, Safin is not your average tennis pro. He is a pure one-off.

Pete Sampras, who knows a thing or two when it comes to talent, had always insisted that Safin was one of the most- talented players he has played against. But in a career plagued by injuries and steered off course by the lure of the good life, the 6ft 4in Russian has hardly done justice to his natural talent.

Then again, in what might be the final quarter of his career, after a victory like Wednesday’s, Safin is unlikely to find himself looking back ruefully.

“It was a great match for me. I haven’t won such a match in a long time,” said the man who seemed set to dominate the men’s game when he won the first of his two Grand Slam titles, beating the peerless Sampras in the U.S. Open final in the year 2000.

Big difference

On a day when Djokovic looked strangely listless, Safin called the shots from the baseline. He served with tremendous confidence and skills, controlled the rallies superbly and, most of all, returned wonderfully well.

Although Djokovic did have problems with his serve — especially in the first set and in the third — it was the quality of Safin’s returns that made a big difference. Safin returned so well and so deep that the 21-year old Serb, standing on the baseline, rather than a few feet behind, was rocked back on his heels.

It was a very bad day for me. I didn’t do anything I was expected to do,” admitted Djokovic who looked tactically inept on a surface that demands more flexibility than any other.

Safin took the first set riding on a break in the seventh game, dominated the second set tiebreak, winning six points in a row from 0-1, and then outplayed his young opponent in the third.

``The (grass) court is getting slower and slower each year and you can play from the baseline without going close to the net,” said Safin, seeking to explain his stunning success on a surface he has hated to play on.

Great heart

Over two hours after Djokovic’s exit, the women’s top seed and world No.1, Anna Ivanovic, made sure that it wasn’t going to be a day of double disaster for Serbia.

After saving a matchpoint with a lucky winner off the tape in the second set, Ivanovic showed great heart to outlast Nathalie Dechy of France 6-7(2), 7-6(3), 10-8 in three hours and 24 minutes to go through to the third round.

In the gloaming on Tuesday evening, Leander Paes and his Czech partner Lukas Dlouhy, seeded nine in the men’s doubles event, overcame a stiff challenge from James Auckland and Jamie Delgado or Britain to go through to the second round with a 4-6, 6-0, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 victory.

If Paes and partner being stretched in the first round was a surprise, then a greater surprise, of the pleasant variety, for Indian fans was provided by Rohan Bopanna and his Pakistani partner Aisam -ul-Haq Qureshi. They played superb tennis to beat the 10th-seeded Poles, Mariusz Frystenberg and Marcin Matkowski 6-3, 7-5, 6-4.

Federer progresses

In the last match on the centre court, Roger Federer beat Robin Soderling of Sweden 6-3, 6-4, 7-6(3) to go through to the third round. This was the Swiss maestro’s 61st straight victory on grass.

IMPORTANT RESULTS

Prefix denotes seeding

Men: Second round: Marat Safin (Rus) bt 3-Novak Djokovic (Srb) 6-4, 7-6(3), 6-2; 29-Andreas Seppi (Ita) bt Florent Serra (Fra) 6-3, 6-7(4), 6-2, 6-7(5), 6-4; Bobby Reynolds (USA) bt Frank Dancevic (Can) 4-6, 7-6(10), 6-4, 6-4; 13-Stanislas Wawrinka (Sui) bt Juan Martin Del Potro (Arg) 7-6(5), 6-3, 7-5; Mischa Zverev (Ger) bt 21-Juan Carlos Ferrero (Esp) 6-4, 6-4, 2-1 (retd.).

20-Lleyton Hewitt (Aus) bt Albert Montanes (Esp) 7-6(4), 6-0, 6-2; 31-Feliciano Lopez (Esp) bt Roko Karanusic (Cro) 6-3, 6-3, 6-4; Simone Bolelli (Ita) bt 15-Fernando Gonzalez (Chi) 7-6(8), 7-6(7), 3-6, 7-6(4); 10-Marcos Baghdatis (Cyp) bt Thomas Johansson (Swe) 6-4, 6-4, 6-4; 1-Roger Federer (Sui) bt Robin Soderling (Swe) 6-3, 6-4, 7-6(3).

Women: second round: Zheng Jie (Chn) bt Elena Baltacha (GBR) 6-2, 7-5; 18-Nicole Vaidisova (Cze) bt Samantha Stosur (Aus) 6-2, 0-6, 6-4; Casey Dellacqua (Aus) bt Pauline Parmentier (Fra) 1-6, 6-2, 6-3.

1-Ana Ivanovic (Srb) bt Nathalie Dechy (Fra) 6-7(2), 7-6(3), 10-8; 4-Svetlana Kuznetsova (Rus) bt Kateryna Bondarenko (Ukr) 6-2, 6-3; 11-Marion Bartoli (Fra) bt Tatiana Perebiynis (Ukr) 6-2, 7-5; 6-Serena Williams (USA) bt Urszula Radwanska (Pol) 6-4, 6-4; 15-Agnes Szavay (Hun) bt Monica Niculescu (Rom) 5-7, 7-5, 6-2; Bethanie Mattek (USA) bt Vera Dushevina (Rus) 7-6(6), 6-4; 8-Anna Chakvetadze (Rus) bt Edina Gallovits (Rom) 6-4, 6-2; 29-Amelie Mauresmo (Fra) bt Virginia Ruano Pascual (Esp) 4-6, 6-1, 6-1; Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (Rus) bt Li Na (Chn) 6-2, 6-4.

First round: 5-Elena Dementieva (Rus) bt Maria Elena Camerin (Ita) 6-3, 6-7(7), 6-3.

Earlier results:

Men: Doubles (first round): Leander Paes (Ind) & Lukas Dlouhy (Cze) bt James Auckland & Jamie Delgado (GBR) 4-6, 6-0, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3; Rohan Bopanna (Ind) & Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi (Pak) bt Mariusz Fyrstenbeg & Marcin Matkowski (Pol) 6-3, 7-5, 6-4

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