Washington: Baghdatis Progresses Into Final
After last week’s failure, when junior world champion Marcos Baghdatis stopped into the quarter finals in Los Angeles, today his much better playing helped the Cypriot qualify into the final in Washington. Baghdatis showed some tennis demonstration in front of Belgian Xavier Malisse who defeated in the second round Russian Smitry Tursunov so what Baghdatis did the less expected. Thus, eighth-seeded Cypriot won the first set with 6-2 as the second was sent by the Belgian into the tie break. Despite the score looked a very tough confrontation is being showed, this wasn’t what it seemed to be, mentioning that once Baghdatis was turned down a 6-5 game advantage, the tie break caught Mallise fallen asleep as the Cypriot broke out to a 6-1 lead to end the final game 7-6 (4).
The victory sent Baghdatis into the big final where he’ll meet either Argentina’s champion David Nalbandian or Croatia’s Marin Cilic. Cyprus player came after a very poor performance provided this year, just last week Baghdatis winning his first second round since the French Open this spring, when he declared: “It’s been two months and that’s a long time (without winning). I came with this mentality of fighting for every match. I felt really bad on court and it’s good to win a match when you feel bad. The positive attitude is there, which is very important, looking forward to the next one.” However, he is about to win in Washington his second title of the season, after Sydney tournament that took place in January when he defeated French Richard Gasquet in two straight sets, 6-4, 7-6.
Baghdatis will find out on Saturday who’s going to meet in the US final as Nalbandian will face Marin Cilic, both of them progressing into the semis after beating French Gilles Simon (3-6, 6-2, 6-3), the one who crashed out second seeded Andy Roddick, and Janko Tipsarevic who got an easier defeat from Cilic, 7-6, 6-4. In his two set victory, Baghdatis lost his serve only once to break point the rest of the games, but his win was also sustained by plenty of unforced errors Malisse produced.
