JOIN USA profligate Somdev Devvarman crashed out of the singles event of the Dubai Duty Free Championships after a straight set defeat against fellow wild card Malek Jaziri in the second round here on Wednesday.
Coming into the match following an upset win over second seed Juan Martin Del Potro, the 78th-ranked Indian suffered a 3-6, 5-7 defeat against his Tunisian rival, who is ranked 137.
Somdev had three break chances in the first set but converted none while dropping his serve twice. The second set was no different as he could cash in on only two of the seven break chances. He lost his serve thrice.
Roger Federer, meanwhile, survived a scare from Czech Radek Stepanek before emerging a 6-2, 6-7 (4), 6-3 winner.
While serving to stay in the match, Somdev saved two match points but netted a forehand on the third to Jaziri the victory. Somdev will collect 45 ranking points and USD 24,475 as prize money.
Third seed and last year’s runner-up Tomas Berdych knocked out Sergiy Stakhovsky 6-2, 6-1 in just 57 minutes for a place in the quarterfinals. It was his 15th match win of the season, which includes his eighth ATP World Tour title at the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament in Rotterdam.
India’s Mahesh Bhupathi and his Uzbek partner Denis Istomin advanced to the second round of men’s doubles competition. Bhupathi and Istomin came back from a set down to beat Austrian Oliver Marach and Romanian Florin Mergea 4-6, 6-3, 16-14.
The Indian-Uzbek pair served very erratically. They had six aces but also managed to make seven double faults.
The failure to convert break point opportunities cost the Austrian-Romanian pair easily. They managed to convert just two off seven break points while Bhupathi and Istomin had just two break point chances in the entire match and converted both of them.
Results (Second round, prefix denotes seedings): 4-Roger Federer (Sui) bt Radek Stepanek (Cze) 6-2, 6-7(4), 6-3; 6-Mikhail Youzhny (Rus) bt James Ward (Gbr) 6-1, 7-6 (7-3); 3-Tomas Berdych (Cze) bt Sergiy Stakhovsky (Ukr) 6-2, 6-1; Lukas Rosol (Cze) bt 8-Dmitry Tursunov (Rus) 6-4, 7-6 (7-4); 7-Philipp Kohlschreiber (Ger) bt Andreas Seppi (Ita) 6-3, 6-3; Malek Jaziri (Tun) bt Somdev Devvarman (Ind) 6-3, 7-5.