Washington: Top seed Tomas Berdych showed some rust in playing his first match since reaching the Wimbledon final but managed to beat Dmitry Tursunov 7-6 4-6 6-1 on Wednesday and reach the third round of the Washington Classic.
Berdych, who had a bye in the opening round, had a poor service game and made a slew of unforced errors against the 514th-ranked Russian, but he was still pleased to advance. "The important thing was that I could go through," said Berdych, who lost to Rafa Nadal in the Wimbledon final.
"He just kept serving well and won the second set. "But I got some power and energy and was able to win the third set. I'm quite happy to start after Wimbledon with another win." The eighth-ranked Berdych lost his serve early in each of the first two sets but raced to a 5-0 lead in the final set before winning the match in two hours and 17 minutes. "It was a very important moment," the Czech said of the early games in the final set. "I was trying to really concentrate. In the other sets I started off pretty bad. "I wanted to do it differently in the third set, give him some more pressure. It was a key moment."
In other matches at the tournament that serves as a warm-up for the U.S. Open, Janko Tipsarevic gained a measure of revenge for his loss to Sam Querrey in the Los Angeles semi-finals last week by shocking the hard-serving American 7-6 6-3 in sweltering conditions with temperatures reaching over 32 Celsius.
Ukrainian Illya Marchenko was leading Ernests Gulbis 6-1 1-0 when the ninth-seeded Latvian wilted and retired, while Australia's Lleyton Hewitt, who won the Washington tournament in 2004, suffered an injury to his right calf during his match against Colombian Alejandro Falla and called it quits.
Tipsarevic lost only six points on his serve during the second-round match against Querrey despite also struggling with his first serve. "I was focused from start to finish," Tipsarevic told reporters after Wednesday's 78-minute match. "I could see Sam was a little bit tired from the LA week.
"I'm so happy in these conditions I managed to close it out in two sets." There were no service breaks in the first set and in the first point of the tiebreak the sixth-seeded American rifled a 137 mph (220kph) second serve wide to gift-wrap a mini-break to Tipsarevic. The 26-year-old Serb won the tiebreak 7-3 and said watching Querrey attempt booming shots on his second serve during the first set gave him a boost.
"At one point I was getting aggravated because two or three times we played a very tough game and it's 30-30 and he has a second serve (and) he then serves a bomb, a ace. "On one side it was getting me nervous but on the other it gave me mental strength, saying to myself, 'he's getting tired. Just hang in there.' I managed to stay disciplined and (the double fault) finally came."
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