Wild card James Blake of the United States stunned French Open champion Rafael Nadal of Spain at the US Open on Saturday, winning a classic third-round match 6-4, 4-6, 6-3, 6-1.
The victory over the world number two and second seed was a hard-earned reward for the 25-year-old from nearby Connecticut, who is playing the best tennis of his life after enduring a catalogue of personal disasters last year.
”I can’t believe how well things are going, and I can’t say how much this is a dream come true,” Blake said. ”Rafael is a great champion. To do this on the centre court … when I look back on my career, this will be one of my great wins.”
Blake, who had seen previous US Open campaigns derailed by the likes of Lleyton Hewitt and Roger Federer, made the most of this latest opportunity.
He was buoyed by the support of a crowd touched by his gutsy fight back from a terrible 2004 when he fractured his neck, suffered badly from shingles and lost his father to cancer.
Blake claimed the first break of serve in the ninth game of the opening set, and had a chance in the opening game of the second, when Nadal fended him off with six straight points en route to a 2-0 lead.
Blake took advantage of Nadal’s defensive position well behind the base line to break back with a string of winners. He erased an 0-40 deficit in the eighth game to level at 4-4, and two games later saved two set points.
A backhand into the net gave Nadal a third set point, and Blake helped him out with a high forehand into the net.
Blake broke to lead 3-2 in the third with a remarkable corner to corner lob, then broke to take the set 6-3.
The fourth was mostly a formality, with Blake breaking twice to lead 5-1 and leaving no doubt that Nadal’s hard-court abilities still lag behind his undoubted clay-court skills.
Agassi still in it
Two-time champion Andre Agassi kept his 20th straight US Open campaign going strong on Saturday with a four-set third-round victory over 19-year-old Czech Tomas Berdych.
Agassi (35) rallied with a vengeance after dropping the opening set to win 3-6, 6-1, 6-4, 7-6 (7/2).
Berdych, who was not quite a year old when Agassi played his first US Open in 1986, silenced the crowd on the Arthur Ashe Stadium Court with a brisk first set.
But the youngster’s errors multiplied as Agassi, one of the game’s best returners, applied more pressure to his serve in the second.
The American grabbed a 5-1 lead with breaks in the second and sixth games as the delighted crowd cheered their man and jeered any time Berdych had the temerity to question a line call.
Agassi got the only break he needed in the opening game of the third set, and an out-of-sorts Berdych, ranked 34th in the world and seeded 32nd, never looked like challenging him. He fended off two set points in the 10th game before Agassi finished it off with a service winner.
Berdych rediscovered his touch in the fourth, not giving Agassi a look-in on his serve through the first five games.
In the sixth, he gave himself three break chances, one with a blistering backhand, another with a deep overhead smash and a third with a stinging forehand down the line.
Agassi replied to all of them in kind and finally won the game with an ace.
”Each set my quality picked up, and in the fourth set we were both playing well, back-and-forth, back-and-forth,” Agassi said.
Berdych, perhaps a trifle deflated, immediately fell behind on his serve 0-30, but saved two break points himself with serves to hold for 4-3 and broke Agassi to serve for the set.
The eight-time grand-slam champion responded with a break of his own, giving himself the opportunity with a delicate drop shot and following up with a fierce forehand winner.
Agassi caught Berdych with the drop shot several times in the match, and also saw it backfire. But he tried it on on the final point of the sixth game, and after clipping the net it fell right for him to force the tiebreaker, which he took control of early to win with his first match point.
Other matches
In other early matches, French Open champion Justine Henin-Hardenne and sixth-seeded Elena Dementieva made their own lives difficult, but eventually made it into the fourth round.
Henin-Hardenne, seeded seventh, cruised through the first set against Yoon Jeong Cho, but let her guard down in the second and found herself in a dogfight with the 75th-ranked South Korean.
The 23-year-old Belgian emerged with a 6-0, 7-6 (7/4) victory, at least managing to finish off the match in straight sets, which was more than Dementieva could do.
The sixth-seeded Russian, runner-up to Svetlana Kuznetsova at the US Open last year, also raced through the first set against 29th-seeded compatriot Anna Chakvetadze.
But her unforced errors doubled from nine to 18 in the second set, and she ended up needing a third-set tiebreaker to advance 6-1, 4-6, 7-6 (7/5).
As usual, Dementieva was dogged by double faults — 19 for the match — but she proved herself more capable of finishing off the important points as she and Chakvetadze slugged it out from the base line.
Women’s world number one Lindsay Davenport, who has surrendered just 10 games in her first two matches, headlined the night session in the Arthur Ashe Stadium.
The 29-year-old second seed took on Spain’s Anabel Medina Garrigues, seeded 32nd and winner of two titles this year — both on clay.
Third-seeded Amelie Mauresmo of France continued pursuit of her first grand-slam title against number 31 Anna-Lena Groenefeld of Germany. — Sapa-AFP