Miami – 3R

Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer comfortably won their third round matches, especially Djokovic, who destroyed again his opponent (James Blake). The Serb has the fourth best start of a year in the Open era, only Ivan Lendl and John McEnroe (twice) won more consecutive matches  opening a new season. Very likely the three best players in the world will advance to the semifinals, last week the “trinity” appeared in the last four at Indian Wells. Juan Martin del Potro accompanied them and there is a possibility he will join them in Miami too. In the third round Del Potro played a perfect match against No. 4 Robin Soderling. The Argentinian won 6-3, 6-2 serving 12 aces (never forced to play ‘deuce’ in nine service games) and outplaying his much more higher ranked opponent in every department of the game. Del Potro said: “I served much better than in the Kohlschreiber match, and that’s what I need if I want beat Top 10 players.” Six unseeded players reached the fourth round (three at Indian Wells), among them the biggest surprises produced Marcel Granollers [55] and Olivier Rochus [89] who have won three consecutive matches in three sets. Granollers railled from a *3:5 deficit in the 3rd set against Michael Llodra. The Frenchman couldn’t deal with tough conditions (heat, high humidity), was barely moving on the court in the last four games, won  just 4 points, lost 16. The shortest player on the tour, Rochus made the biggest upset in Miami last year eliminating Djokovic. This year, the Belgian becomes the first qualifier to reach the last 16  since Guillermo Canas in 2007 (the Argentine reached the final then). In the first round Rochus was one game away from losing to Blazs Kavcic, after that he stunned two seeded guys: Marcos Baghdatis and Mikhail Youzhny. Janko Tipsarevic‘s opponents broke their racquets playing against him in the last two rounds. In the second round, usually very calm Marin Cilic smashed his racquet in impressive style at 2:4 in the 2nd set tie-break, followed by Philipp Petzschner, who broke the other one with help of his thigh 🙂
A match between Alexandr Dolgopolov [23] and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga [16] lasted two days because on Monday was suspended due to rain at 3:2 in the 3rd set for the Ukrainian. On Tuesday, he saved a triple mini-match point at 4:4 and won 6-7, 6-4, 7-5 notching the second victory in ’11 over the Frenchman (the previous one at the Australian Open in five sets).