Tennis story by Gareth Bowman, Fri, 18 Nov 2005 09:36:00 GMT


David Nalbandian, who was preparing for a fishing holiday and switching his mind off from tennis, received a call for participating in the Masters Cup as Andy Roddick backed out due to back problems. He found himself up against Roger Federer in his very first match, which he lost, but not before giving the Swiss player a run for his money.

But, two matches later, the Argentinian had a superb match beating Croatia's Ivan Ljubicic 6-2, 6-2 to qualify for Fridays' semi-finals, where he will meet will meet Russian Nikolay Davydenko, the winner of the gold group. Among others, who will join him in the tournament's last four by is world number one Roger Federer.

Ljubicic, who on Tuesday was couple of points close to defeating Federer, ended his dream run with that loss. He commented: “I told my wife I would have rather played a second match against Roger than play David because the surface here suits him so well. I was serving at 220kmh and he was returning the ball as if I was hitting it at 120.” The Croat had lost the edge when he was 5-0 down in the first set within 20 minutes.

23 year-old Nalbandian was in great touch particularly when he came up with deep returns of serve. He converted five out of total six break points into winners and qualified from the Red Group in the 4.45 million US dollars event. In the second set, he got a double break and he completed it in style with a booming serve to finish in just 67 minutes.

Wishing he “could play like that more often” David Nalbandian added: "I feel I played one of my best matches indoors." Nalbandian, remembered for his surprise appearance in the 2002 Wimbledon final, where he lost to Lleyton Hewitt, has still not been able to do justice to his talent. Ranked number 12 in the world, Nalbandian, has had several injuries last year, which hindered his progress.

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