Australian Open champion Marat Safin became embroiled in an argument with an old friend and the umpire before crashing out of the second round of the Masters Series in Hamburg on Wednesday.
The volatile Russian lost 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 to Juan Carlos Ferrero, the former French Open champion from Spain, whom he knew from their adolescent days together in Barcelona, and the two clashed over a line decision early in the second set.
Safin was so incensed at the way in which his service had been called out — after he had thought it was called good — that he climbed up the umpire’s chair and argued nose to nose with Fergus Murphy.
The Irishman appeared to take it in good heart and the dialogue became protracted, something to which Ferrero began to take exception.
”His coach said to him [Ferrero] to tell the chair umpire to tell me to shut up and play,” Safin said afterwards.
Safin, who also accused Ferrero of receiving unlawful coaching, claimed his old buddy had been acting ”like a 14-year-old”.
”I mean, he’s 25 years old, he’s grown up, he’s played a lot of tournaments. I don’t need to cheat anyone. I am trying to win the match and play tennis.
”I have no complaints except this incident. It didn’t hurt me — it really bothered me,” he concluded ambivalently.
Ferrero, whose victory was his best for about 18 months during which his career has been damaged by injury and chicken pox, was as calm afterwards as Safin was upset.
”I know him really well and sometimes he gets nervous and does something like this with the umpire,” Ferrero said. ”He was talking with the umpire when he didn’t have a lot of reason to talk, because the ball was out.
”I said: ‘The umpire can’t start taking three minutes with the player,’ but Marat is like that sometimes, and I know him and I am very friendly with him. I hope this doesn’t mean too much for our relationship.
”As for the coaching, my coach talked to me one or two times in the whole match. It was exactly the same as his coach, and that’s no reason why I won the match.”
Safin was 0-2 down in the second set, having won the first when the dispute occurred and never got in front again. Since beating world number one Roger Federer and winning the Australian Open in January, he has won only seven matches and lost eight.
Ferrero, whose ranking had sunk so low that he had had to come through the qualifying competition, now plays 15th seed Nikolay Davydenko of Russia.
Three other seeds were beaten — Guillermo Canas, the number 12 from Argentina; Ivan Ljubicic, the number 13 from Croatia; and Radek Stepanek, the number 16 from the Czech republic.
Meanwhile, Roger Federer exacted the revenge he has waited nine months to get when he atoned for one of the most surprising defeats of recent times to reach the third round.
Federer had been touted as one of the all-time greats on arrival in Athens and yet was beaten in straight sets by the little-known Tomas Berdych in the second round of the Olympic Games.
Now, however, the world number one from Switzerland overcame the Czech 6-2, 6-1 in only 54 minutes to reach the last 16 in defence of his Hamburg title. — Sapa-AFP