Nieminen takes listless Hewitt to five sets

Fine US Open run ends in quarter-final defeat

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Finnish tennis No.1 Jarkko Nieminen could not claim a semi-final berth at the US Open, this year's last Grand Slam event, but went down fighting to the 3rd seed Lleyton Hewitt of Australia. An edgy and somewhat listless Hewitt came through 2-6, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3, 6-1.
      This was an up-and-down encounter, interesting without being a classic of the calibre of the quarter-final meeting between Andre Agassi and James Blake. Both players had moments when they could do no wrong, but neither Nieminen nor Hewitt will look back on this match as one of their greatest, despite the fact that it was a milestone for the Finn, who was making his first appearance in the last eight in a Grand Slam tournament.
     
Nieminen started brightly and broke Hewitt twice in the opening set. He looked comfortable, mixing up his shots and the pace of the game, while Hewitt seemed out of sorts and unusually subdued. The Australian also made 16 unforced errors to Nieminen's 8.
      Any thoughts that a huge upset might be on the cards were scotched in the second set, which Hewitt breezed through in just 22 minutes without materially having to raise his game. Everything that the Finn had done right in the first set now went wrong, as his service faltered and he repeatedly dropped the ball short, allowing Hewitt to rack up easy winners.
     
Nieminen changed his shirt between the second and third set, and this seemed to lift his spirits somewhat. He broke Hewitt for 5-3 and served out for the set.
      At this point, Nieminen's hooking forehands and powerful double-handed backhand strokes were again proving quite a handful for the 2001 winner and last year's beaten finalist.
     
However, he could not sustain the momentum, and when Hewitt got his service firing on all cylinders and upped his tempo, the fourth set saw him dash to a 3-0 lead that he never relaxed.
      Having got on terms, Hewitt then turned the screw and raced away to take the closer 6-1, although the set was rather less one-sided than perhaps that scoreline suggests.
      By the end, Hewitt had loosened up enough even to bring out some of those trade-mark "C'mon!" shouts to punctuate big points.
     
The winner, who will now meet top-seeded Roger Federer in the semi-finals, gave full credit to his opponent for providing him with something to think about, and he admitted he had been a little non-plussed at the end of the third set:
      "It's nice to be through to another semi-final. Conditions [on the Arthur Ashe stadium court] weren't easy out there. Jarkko's had a great tournament, he's a hell of a player. He gives a lot of the top players a lot of trouble. His game picked up, his serve picked up. I had to dig deep to find a way out of it."
      As for Nieminen, he can look back on a historic tournament in which he raised the bar for himself and Finnish tennis quite considerably. His run to the quarter-finals will be reflected in a greatly improved position in the ATP rankings as of next week. He can expect to rise from 57th in the entry list tables to somewhere between 30th and 40th place, and he also collects a cheque for USD 135,000 for his pains.
      Now Nieminen will above all be looking to break his duck in terms of ATP tournament wins: he has thus far been a beaten finalist on four occasions.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Nieminen to face Hewitt in US Open quarter-finals (7.9.2005)

Links:
  US Open: Jarkko Nieminen

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