Photo: Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships
Marcos is through to the quarter-finals of the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships, one of the ATP World Tour’s 500-level events, after battling past Indian qualifier Somdev Devvarman 6-3, 3-6, 6-1 on Wednesday afternoon.
For a place in the semi-finals, Marcos will face German Michael Berrer, who progressed to the last eight when fourth seed Nikolay Davydenko retired after just one set of their second-round clash earlier today.
“I didn’t feel very good out there today,” admitted Marcos, who has been suffering from food poison for the past five days. “I was a bit without energy and wasn’t moving very well. I think I played the worst match of this year’s campaign. But, I won it and that’s the positive thing. I hope I’ll feel much better tomorrow. I’m going to try and get something in my stomach tonight, tomorrow all day and try to win tomorrow also.”
In his first meeting with the 25-year-old Devvarman, Marcos made a strong start, breaking the Indian’s serve to love in the fourth game to establish a 3-1 lead, which he did not relinquish as he went on to close out the one-set lead.
World No. 143 Devvarman, who won two matches in qualifying en route to reaching the second round, demonstrated his potential as he forced the match to a deciding set, breaking Marcos’ serve in the eighth game of the second set before serving out to 15.
Marcos was quick to re-stamp his authority on the match, though. Two breaks of serve saw him race to a 4-0 advantage in the third set, and though Devvarman was able to reclaim one of the breaks, Marcos won the final two games of the match to seal victory after one hour and 44 minutes.
"In the third [set] I had so many chances to break him," said Devvarman, who held 11 break points in the final set. "Against good players you've got to take those chances. It's just a bad effort on my part and good effort on his part. Even the games I got broken I don't feel I was outplayed. It was just a question of some lose shots against a quality player is going to get you on the wrong end of the stick, that's all. That's how the match went."
Stay tuned to www.baghdatis.com for details of Marcos’ quarter-final match, which will be played on Thursday.
Go, Marcos!
