By IANS
New York : Three of the top four seeds – number one Nikolay Davydenko, number two Tommy Robredo and number four David Ferrer – were all bundled out in the third round of the $675,000 Pilot Pen tennis tournament at New Haven, Connecticut.
Third seeded American James Blake hung in though, even facing three match points, to advance through to the quarterfinals. He won again later Thursday to reach the semi-finals.
With rain disrupting the schedules earlier in the week, all four quarterfinals were also played Thursday, with Blake leading a talented foursome into the penultimate round.
The American was one of the first to move into the last four, a 6-4, 6-2 winner over Fernando Verdasco in his first career meeting with the Spaniard. Blake moved through to his sixth semi-final of the year, his third on summer hardcourts.
Blake improved to 15-3 on hardcourts, a record that has spawned runner-up finishes at Los Angeles and last week at the Cincinnati Masters. He is now two steps away from his second title in New Haven, having won the tournament in 2005.
Joining Blake in the semi-finals were Ivo Karlovic, who dispatched Igor Andreev 6-7 (8-10), 6-4, 7-6 (7-1), Mardy Fish, who dismissed Stanislas Wawrinka 6-3, 6-3 and Paul-Henri Mathieu, who moved past countryman Gilles Simon under the lights 6-4, 6-3.
Earlier, in a battle between two players who had both reached the final here in the past, the 16th seed Agustin Calleri took an early lead against Blake and held three match points leading 5-4 in the second set.
But Blake was not about to give up, saving those, winning a second set tie-break and rolling through the third set to reach the quarterfinals 3-6, 7-6 (7-2), 6-1.
“Guys are so close and so talented out here that if they get a second chance they can really take advantage,” said Blake after his third round win.
“That’s why a lot of people get spoken about in a negative way for choking or anything like that, but it’s so close that it’s not easy to serve out a match and it’s not easy to close it out when a guy feels a little loose and they start going for shots the way I did after I got it back to 5-all.”
Top seed Davydenko fell to the 13th seeded Simon 6-4, 6-4, Robredo lost to Wawrinka 6-3, 6-3 and Ferrer crashed to a 3-6, 7-6(7-3), 6-4 defeat to the 14th seeded Andreev.
Whereas Robredo’s loss to the unseeded Wawrinka was somewhat of a surprise, as the Spaniard had never lost to the Swiss in three previous meetings, the other upsets were not as much of a surprise granted their head-to-head histories.
Davydenko had lost his last meeting with Simon at Umag earlier this summer, while Ferrer dropped three of his four previous encounters against Russia’s Andreev.
“We had long rallies and he won all of them. I was disappointed because normally from the baseline I am more in control and can make some winners. Today I tried to attack and I was making so many mistakes. I’m disappointed, because I was defending points here. So it’s not so great,” admitted Davydenko.
In other third round matches, fifth seed Mathieu reached the last eight with a 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory over 10th-seeded Nicolas Almagro, 12th seed Verdasco upset sixth seed Jarkko Nieminen 6-3, 2-6, 6-4, 11th seed Karlovic downed unseeded Thomas Johansson 4-6, 6-4, 7-5 and wild card entrant Fish rallied past an unseeded Jose Acasuso 6-7 (4-7), 6-3, 6-0.