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Wimbledon 2005


Safin plans a date with the defending champion

Jun 27 2007

By Phil Casey, The Journal

 

Marat Safin admitted he does not even know what his next opponent looks like after booking his place in the second round at Wimbledon.

Safin will face qualifier Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi of Pakistan - who beat Britain's Lee Childs - after beating South Africa's Rik De Voest 7-6 (7-5) 6-4 7-5, and would likely then take on defending champion Roger Federer in round three.

"I don't even know how Qureshi looks unfortunately," said the 27-year-old Russian. "I guess he's playing pretty good tennis if he qualified and won a three-set match today.

"I'm just missing a little bit of confidence. Everything is down to confidence. Even if you're playing bad, you win a couple of matches, then you might have a surprise and start to play well and you start to make some results.

"I'll play the next match, and I face Federer in the third round. That's my goal, and then see how it's going to go. I have no confidence at the moment because I'm not winning a lot of matches lately, because I've been struggling for the past couple of months, more than a couple of months."

Performance of the day came from Spain's Juan Carlos Ferrero, who came back from two sets down to beat Jan Hajek of the Czech Republic.

Ferrero, the former French Open champion and 20th seed, eventually won 6-7 (5-7) 4-6 6-3 6-2 7-5 on court 14 in a match held over from Monday due to the rain delays. France's Richard Gasquet had a far easier time, the 12th seed beating another Czech player, Bohdan Ulihrach, 6-3 6-4 6-4, while ninth seed James Blake enjoyed a similarly easy success against Russian Igor Andreev.

Other seeds to progress were Jonas Bjorkman, Tommy Robredo, former finalist David Nalbandian, Dmitry Tursunov, Ivan Ljubicic and Tomas Berdych, but 31st seed Dominik Hrbaty was beaten in straight sets by Italian Andreas Seppi.

Argentina's Juan Martin Del Potro claimed the dubious privilege of facing defending champion Roger Federer in the next round after completing a rain-delayed four-set victory over Italian veteran Davide Sanguinetti.

Ecuador's Nicolas Lapentti, scheduled to face the absent Andy Murray needed five sets to see off American Kevin Kim, while Queen's Club finalist Nicolas Mahut overcame fellow Frenchman Arnaud Clement in four sets.

 

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