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| October 30, 2007 | Tuesday | Shawwal 17, 1428 |
Federer guaranteed top finish with home title
BASEL (Switzerland), Oct 29: Roger Federer won his seventh tournament of the season on Sunday, beating unseeded Finn Jarkko Nieminen 6-3, 6-4 to successfully defend his hometown title in Basel.
Federer’s latest victory guarantees that the Swiss will finish the season as world No 1 one for a fourth consecutive year.
Federer had not dropped a set in any of his previous seven meetings with the world No 29 and the Swiss Indoors final proved predictably straightforward.
A single break of the Finn’s serve at the start of the opening set put Federer comfortably on his way to winning his 52nd career title and his third on home soil -- following last year’s Swiss Indoors title and his 2004 triumph in Gstaad.
Nieminen started to find his rhythm in the second set, securing a break point in Federer’s first service game but failing to convert it.
The left-hander then won two service games to love, a feat that Federer failed to pull off throughout the match.
But any hopes that Nieminen might make things difficult for the world No 1 faded when he next came to serve, double-faulting to hand Federer a further break point before hitting a forehand wide.
LYON (France): France’s Sebastien Grosjean clinched his first title in five years when he won the Lyon tournament by beating compatriot Marc Gicquel 7-6, 6-4 on Sunday.
Grosjean, who had won his last title in St Petersburg in 2002, played solid tennis throughout to wrap up victory in one hour 36 minutes.
Gicquel was beaten by compatriot Richard Gasquet in last year’s Lyon final.
Both players held serve in the first set with Grosjean winning the tie break 7-5 with a forehand winner after 54 minutes.
The former French No 1 broke decisively in the ninth game of the second set but Gicquel saved three match points.
Grosjean, however, served his 15th and 16th aces of the match before sealing the win with a stunning cross-court passing shot.
ST PETERSBURG: Briton Andy Murray crushed Spaniard Fernando Verdasco 6-2, 6-3 in the final of the St Petersburg Open on Sunday to win his second title of the year on his debut appearance in Russia’s second city.
The second seed broke Verdasco twice in each set to claim a comfortable victory after one hour 18 minutes.
The Spanish sixth seed, who had not dropped a set in his four previous matches on his way to the final, made far too many unforced errors to put up a good fight.
Murray faced only one break point against him, in the fourth game of the second set, while converting both of his chances in the first set and going two for five in the second.
He earned the first break in the third game and repeated the trick in the fifth to take a one-set lead, then broke the Spaniard again at the start of the second.
The world No 16 held his nerve to maintain his advantage before breaking Verdasco once more in the final game to earn the third title of his career, after winning twice in San Jose.
The win greatly enhanced Murray’s chances of qualifying for next month’s season-ending Masters Cup in Shanghai, featuring the world’s top eight players.
Several players are still fighting for the two remaining spots, with the 20-year-old Scot moving up to 11th spot, just three points behind eighth-placed German Tommy Haas.
LINZ (Austria): Slovakia’s Daniela Hantuchova defeated Patty Schnyder of Switzerland 6-4, 6-2 on Sunday to win the Linz Open.
Victory also earned her the final place in the eight-player field for the WTA Championships in Madrid from Nov 6.
Hantuchova ended the race with the same number of points as Russian Maria Sharapova, who also qualified when Venus Williams withdrew after suffering dizziness at the US Open. The American is still undergoing tests to determine the cause.
It was Hantuchova’s fourth final of the year and her second title, after she defeated Svetlana Kuznetsova to win Indian Wells in March.—Reuters
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