Sunday,
May 13, 2007
Filippo Volandri's
Impressive Performance in
The
ANNOTICO Report
Filippo
Volandri had beaten #1 Roger
Federer on Thursday and also knocked out # 12
Tomas Berdych and # 13 Richard Gasquet this week, before succumbing to #6 ranked
Fernando Gonzalez. Quite a Performance for a # 53
ranked wildcard.
The
Final will be # 2 Rafael Nadal vs
# 6 Fernando Gonzalez.
Canadian
Press
Andrew
Dampf
Saturday,
May 12, 2007
ROME (AP) -
Rafael Nadal extended his winning streak on clay to
76 matches and broke John McEnroe's record for most
victories on one surface by defeating Nikolay Davydenko 7-6 (3), 6-7 (8), 6-4 Saturday in the semifinals
of the Rome Masters.
McEnroe had a
75-match winning streak on indoor carpet between September 1983 and April 1985.
In the final, Nadal will meet sixth-ranked Fernando Gonzalez, who ended
Filippo Volandri's impressive run with a 6-1, 6-2 rout.....
Volandri upset top-ranked Roger Federer on Thursday and also knocked out No. 12 Tomas Berdych and No. 13 Richard Gasquet
this week, but the Italian wild card was never in contention against Gonzalez,
who reached the Australian Open final in January.
Gonzalez staved
off a break point in the opening game of the match, broke in the following game
and never looked back.
Gonzalez picked
on Volandri's backhand and took some speed off his
first serve to make sure he got it in on the important points. The Chilean also
mixed in an occasional serve and volley and flattened
out his ground strokes for winners to end several long rallies.
"He played
perfectly. I couldn't get into any rallies. I couldn't play like I wanted to,
that's the most disappointing thing," Volandri
said. "But I beat the No. 1 player and two players in the top 15, It's been a fantastic week."
Filippo Volandri (born on September 5, 1981 in
At the Rome Masters in
2007 Volandri, having entered as a wild card,
recorded the biggest win of his career by dispatching world number one Roger Federer in straight sets, 6-2 6-4.
Afterwards Volandri hailed the victory as not only for himself but for
Italy, telling something of the regard in which Federer,
who holds the record for the longest spell as the world's top-ranked male
player, is held. The result was all the more felt due to
Hopes that this
might be the start of Italy's re-emergence among the top nations of
professional men's tennis were heightened when Volandri
went on to beat highly-tipped world number 12 Tomas Berdych,
6-2 6-3, in the quarter final. The win meant Volandri
would be the first Italian to contest the event's semi-finals since 1978.
His run stopped
in the semifinals, however, as he lost to Fernando Gonzalez 6-1 6-2, renewed
with energy and form. Volandri was never allowed to
reproduce the sort of form that had carried him through to the last four, as Gonzanlez displayed why many consider him the only
realistic threat to Rafael Nadal on clay.
Volandri has 6 ATP Titles, all on clay, with one of those vs Rafael Nadal on March 17,
2003, in
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