(February 25, 2015) DUBAI, UAE – The four top seeds moved into the quarterfinals of the Dubai Tennis Championships on Wednesday, with wins for Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Andy Murray and Tomas Berdych.
Djokovic defeated Andrey Golubev 6-1, 6-2.
“More comfortable than yesterday, that’s for sure,” said Djokovic. “Basically I didn’t have as much pressure from the opponent’s serve as I did last night. Having one match under my belt helped to feel a bit more comfortable to move around on the court quicker, and I tried to take away the time from my opponent today. I tried to be aggressive, step in.”
No. 2 Federer beat Fernando Verdasco 6-4, 6-3. At 1-4 down in the first set, Federer won 20 straight points.
“I’m very happy how the match went,” said Federer. “I think it was a good quality match from my side. I think Fernando played well for spells, but I think I was quite consistent. Fernando is a shot maker and he takes it out of your racquet sometimes. So I’m still very, very pleased the way I played out here tonight.”
Murray had an easy time with Joao Sousa winning 6-0, 6-2 in 57 minutes.
The Scot won the first eight games against Sousa, giving up just 10 points in the opening set.
“I thought I just picked the right shots and played the right way when he was struggling,” said Murray. “I didn’t give him any free points. I didn’t make, you know, just sort of needless errors. He was getting more frustrated because he couldn’t get any free points and then was going for more and more shots and obviously making more errors because of it.”
Tomas Berdych worked hard to claim his 500th career singles victory with a 7-6(7), 5-7, 6-0 win over Simone Bolelli.
“It was a hard day in the office,” said Berdych. “Yeah, it was not easy at all, but then in the end after two sets which were very close, then I took my chances and started to play finally my game and get a bit more to the rhythm, start to serve better. So I need to take the positives from the match, which was definitely the third set. It’s another win.”
Turkish qualifier Marsel Ilhan, had the upset of the day, a 3-6, 7-5, 6-3 win over sixth seed Feliciano Lopez.