Nadal Battles Into Doha SFs

Rafael Nadal will meet Ilya Marchenko for a place in the Qatar ExxonMobil Open final on Friday after the second seed came through a three-set battle.

Nadal, the 2014 champion, converted five of his 10 break point opportunities in a 6-2, 5-7, 6-4 victory over No. 79-ranked Andrey Kuznetsov in a two-hour and eight-minute encounter.

“Kuznetsov played some amazing shots, so it was difficult to control the match,” Nadal said. “It’s true that I missed my serve more than I wanted to, but I really only played one bad game, at 4-3 in the second set. His returns were amazing and his level was very high. Fortunately I played a great third set, with a lot of intensity.”

Marchenko withstood 12 aces to beat seventh seed Jeremy Chardy 6-3, 7-6(3) in one hour and 35 minutes for a place in his third ATP World Tour semi-finals. Marchenko, who beat World No. 7 David Ferrer, is through to the last four of a tour-level event for the first time since 2010 St. Petersburg (l. to Kukushkin).

Afterwards Marchenko admitted, “The most important match after you beat David is the next one. It’s really difficult to handle the stress. Honestly, it was bad night for me. I couldn’t sleep much.”

Joining Nadal and Marchenko in the semi-finals is World No. 1 Novak Djokovic, who was made to work against Leonardo Mayer before winning 6-3, 7-5. The Argentine broke the Djokovic serve in the first game of the second set and served for it at 5-4, but the Serb swept the last four games of the match to advance. He will face Tomas Berdych, who defeated Kyle Edmund 6-3, 6-2, in the semi-finals.

“[Mayer] started better in both the first and second sets,” Djokovic said. “He was going for his shots and he’s a very complete player. The second set was close. It could have gone either way, but I stayed tough and fought through it. It was a good test and I’m glad to get through in straight sets.”