SAN JOSE, CALIF. — Talk about a global game. In a matter of one week, we’ve seen a Lithuanian reach the quarters, and an Uzbek in the semis at the SAP Open — both ATP firsts.
As if men’s tennis didn’t have enough worldwide depth already.
But on Saturday, Denis Istomin — an unheralded 23-year-old native of Uzbekistan — saw his dream run come to an end with a three-set 6-3, 2-6, 6-4 semifinal loss to No. 2 seed Fernando Verdasco at the HP Pavilion. The No. 96-ranked Istomin, who scored back-to-back upsets of No. 4 seed Tommy Haas 7-6(3), 6-2 and No. 6-seed Philipp Kohlschreiber 6-1, 1-6, 6-3 (a win he called “the best match of my life”) en route to the semis, is an aggressive all-courter with a big wingspan who looks as if he poised for a breakthrough. And Verdasco was clearly impressed.
“He’s dangerous,” said the Spaniard.
“If I’m honest, I didn’t expect to be in the final here,” added Verdasco, who took 10 days off following his fourth-round loss to Russian Nikolay Davydenko at the Australian Open in order to recover from a sciatic nerve injury. “I only practiced three days in L.A. before I came here. I also changed my racket [from Tecnifibre to Yonex]. So it was something that I didn’t expect.”
Istomin’s undoing came in the seventh game of the third set. Serving at 3-3, he seemed to lose concentration and watched as Verdasco smacked consecutive forehand winners to the corner. Istomin followed with a pair of loose forehand errors to be broken at love.
“I waited for him to make some mistakes,” said Istomin, who earlier this year reached the third round at the Aussie Open, where he fell to Serb Novak Djokovic. “I started to play on the baseline more, and he attacked. In the future, I need to attack and go to the net more.”
Istomin also said he had a hard time reading the lefty serve of Verdasco, who, despite six double faults, managed to win 43 of 56 first-serve points.
Istomin is lucky to be playing at all. In April 2001, while traveling to a Futures event in his hometown of Tashkent, he broke his right leg in a car accident that left him flat on his back in the hospital for three months. In all, he was sidelined for more than two years.
He was ready to turn away from the sport. But his mother/coach Klaudiya, formerly a Moscow-based teaching pro, urged him to reconsider.
It’s a good thing he listened.
Going up against Andy Roddick in the final, Verdasco will attempt to become the first Spaniard to win the SAP Open since Manuel Santana in the pre-Open Era year of 1964, when the event was known as the Pacific Coast Tennis Championships and played at the Berkeley Tennis Club. Coincidentally, Verdasco is a longtime friend of Santana, a fellow Madrileño and a Hall of Famer who currently heads the Madrid Masters. Santana, the 1966 Wimbledon titlist, served as an advisor to Verdasco at the All England Club in 2007.
“I never saw him play, but everybody told me that he was an unbelievable talent – the drop shots and everything,” said Verdasco. “It is legend, so good.”
RODDICK SHOOTS FOR FOURTH SAP OPEN TITLE
Andy Roddick will be chasing his fourth SAP Open title after surviving a three-set, 32-ace barrage from fellow American Sam Querrey in the semis, a match in which the top seed admitted he was outplayed.
“I’m not going to pretend that I wasn’t a little bit fortunate, a little bit lucky tonight,” said Roddick, who advanced 2-6, 7-6(5), 7-6(4), despite having no break-point opportunities the entire match. “I’m trying to think of something I did better than Sam tonight.”
The 22-year-old Querrey put the pressure on Roddick from the moment the first ball was struck, going for the lines, pulling the trigger on big shots. Roddick was broken in his first service game after opening the match with an uncharacteristic double fault. Querrey scored another break to go up 4-1, and went on to close out the set in a mere 22 minutes.
“I didn’t come out ready to play today,” said Roddick, whose wife, Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition cover girl Brooklyn Decker, was courtside for the first time this week. “He served great the whole match. I didn’t feel like I had a chance on my return. My first-serve return statistics [5 of 63/8 percent] are about as average as you can get.”
But the No. 7-ranked Roddick evened the contest by pushing the match into a second-set tiebreak. And tiebreaks are where the big-serving Texan (who finished with 21 aces) excels most, as evidenced by his lopsided 11-2 mark in breakers this year.
“He’s not going to give you anything,” said Querrey, now the second highest ranked American at No. 31. “He’s not going to make an error. He’s going to make you earn every point.”
Querrey’s only true blemish on the night came late in the third-set tiebreaker, when the laid-back Southern Californian seemed to tighten up at 3-all in the stanza, first with a lackadaisical backhand that sailed long, then a forehand that he punched wide off a mid-court ball. Roddick capitalized, closing out the match with a forehand pass and a forehand approach that his opponent could only scoop into the net.
“A match can turn real fast,” said Roddick, who improved to 13-1 on the year. “You don’t have to play the best of it for the whole time. You can swing a match in a couple of minutes. I feel like that’s what I was able to do tonight.”
“It’s a little tough to lose when I never had a break point faced against me,” said Querrey. “But that’s what happens — especially against Andy, and especially on a fast indoor court like this.”
The Roddick vs. Ferdasco head-to-head will be the SAP Open’s first No. 1 vs. No. 2 seed final since 2002, when Lleyton Hewitt defeated Andre Agassi in the title tilt 4-6, 7-6, 7-6. Roddick leads the career head-to-head 9-2.
