Federer beats Roddick again to gain U.S. Open semifinal berth

Tennis Betting Lines

09/06/2007 - Flushing Meadows, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Roger Federer continued his domination of Andy Roddick, knocking the American out of the U.S. Open with a tight 7-6 (7-5), 7-6 (7-4), 6-2 quarterfinal victory Wednesday night.

The three-time defending champion, Federer won his 26th straight match at the U.S. Open and is now one win away from moving into a Grand Slam final for a 10th consecutive time.

Roddick, the fifth seed and 2003 Open winner, couldn't break the Super Swiss' serve in any game the entire match. In fact, there were only two breaks of serve, the final two times Roddick took the ball, as the top-seeded/world No. 1 Federer moved to 14-1 all-time against his American opponent.

"I didn't have a break point until the third set, it really shows how close he was," Federer said. "I could have lost obviously the first two. I thought it was a tough match."

Next up for Federer is another player he's dominated in his career, gritty fourth-seeded Russian Nikolay Davydenko, who handled 10th-seeded German Tommy Haas 6-3, 6-3, 6-4 in the day session. Federer is 9-0 all-time against Davydenko.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves because this guy can play really well," Federer said. "He's been really tough the last few seasons."

Federer, who beat Roddick in last year's U.S. Open final, currently holds the Wimbledon and Australian Open titles and already owns 11 major championships. He is trying to become the first player to win four straight U.S. Open crowns since the Open Era began in 1968 and the first to accomplish the feat since Bill Tilden won six in a row from 1920-25.

In the first tiebreaker, a Federer backhand return winner moved him to a 6-4 lead, and after Roddick won a point, the world top-ranked player ended the set with an ace down the middle.

Roddick failed on a chance to break serve in the second set by hitting a shot long, and Federer held for a 4-4 score. Then in the tiebreak, the precision of Federer forced Roddick into mistakes. First, a wide return on a short bounce gave Federer a 5-4 lead. Roddick then returned a ball into the net, and finally he couldn't handle a powerful serve to close the set.

Federer's first break came to move ahead 4-2 in the third and the match ended when Roddick sent a return into the net.

Haas netted one final forehand return after 2 hours, 24 minutes of tennis, as the hot Davydenko has yet to drop a set at this particular fortnight (15-0). A frustrated Haas piled up 33 unforced errors and had his serve broken a whopping eight times by the pesky Davydenko.

"When I lost my serve, I knew I had to just concentrate on returning well in the next game, and winning the next point," Davydenko said. "If you think about what you did the point before, you can go crazy, because you may not have played so well in the last point. But today, I returned very well to break him back and finish the match."

Davydenko improved to 3-1 lifetime against Haas, including a quarterfinal victory here a year ago. The very talented but oft-injured Haas topped the Russian in this year's Aussie Open quarters.

The 26-year-old Davydenko will appear in his fourth career Grand Slam semifinal (0-3), including a second straight final four appearance here in New York.

The other quarterfinals will be staged here on Thursday, when third-seeded Serbian Novak Djokovic takes on 17th-seeded Spaniard Carlos Moya and 15th- seeded Spaniard David Ferrer encounters 20th-seeded Argentine Juan Ignacio Chela. The gritty Ferrer upset second-seeded Rafael Nadal here on Tuesday night, with the match actually coming to its conclusion on Wednesday morning.