Nieminen to face Hewitt in US Open quarter-finals

Canny change of tactics brings results

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Jarkko Nieminen joined the select "Last Eight Club" on Tuesday, overcoming Spain's Fernando Verdasco in straight sets 6-2, 7-6 (8-6), 6-3, to progress into the quarter-finals of the US Open, this year's last Grand Slam tournament.
      In the space of a none-too-strenuous one hour and fifty minutes, Nieminen became the first Finnish player ever to reach the final eight of a major tennis tournament such as this, and he earned himself a meeting in the quarters with the tournament 3rd seed Lleyton Hewitt of Australia.
     
Although he had beaten the Spaniard on their only previous encounter, Nieminen probably went into the match as the slight underdog - Verdasco was around ten places above him in the world rankings.
      However, at this level the margins are small, and Nieminen has shown that on a good day he can also dismiss top 10 players. He certainly gave Verdasco a lesson in pacing and strategy, refusing to go head-to-head with his big-hitting opponent and instead mixing up the tempo of the game.
      The change in pace worked perfectly in the first set, which Nieminen breezed through in just 26 minutes. He made only four unforced errors to his opponent's 20. In the match as a whole, Verdasco led in all the statistics, good and bad: he sent down appreciably more service aces than Nieminen (9 to 1), made eight double-faults to Nieminen's clean sheet, and was also guilty of 66 unforced errors while Nieminen made just 14.
     
The match probably hinged on the outcome of the second set, which Nieminen took despite facing a set-point on his own service at 4-5. After Verdasco's volleyed return went wide to give Nieminen the set, the Spaniard lost it completely and smashed his racquet into the ground.
      Thereafter, in the third set, the Finn was able to sit back and watch as a desperate Verdasco played every shot in the book - possible and impossible - in an attempt to find winners. Most of the time he did not.
      When it was all over, Nieminen collapsed on the court, delighted and possibly also dumbfounded by what he had done: reaching a Grand Slam quarter-final is almost certainly the high-point of his professional tennis career so far. It will also propel him up the ATP rankings at least a dozen places, and it presented him with his largest-ever prize money cheque: USD 135,000.
     
Win or lose against Hewitt on Thursday - and the bookmakers can really only have one favourite in this match - Jarkko Nieminen has put himself and Finnish tennis on the map.
      There were the inevitable "Nieminen Finn-ishes off Verdasco" headline howlers on the wire services, and his Thursday meeting with the Australian, a past winner in New York and last year's beaten finalist, is bound to be played in the main arena in front of a full house. Nieminen has nothing to lose and everything to win.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Jarkko Nieminen eases into last 16 at US Open (5.9.2005)

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