World No. 7 Tomas Berdych reached his third ATP World Tour Masters 1000 final on Saturday as he overcame Juan Martin del Potro 7-6(5), 7-6(6) in the semi-finals of the Mutua Madrid Open.
The Czech player rallied from a break down as del Potro squandered the chance to serve for the first set a 5-4, and clinched the opener in the subsequent tie-break. In a role reversal in the second set it was del Potro who recovered from a 1-3 deficit, but Berdych again held his nerve in the tie-break for victory in two hours and 18 minutes.
“I am definitely very happy with the game I played here since the beginning of the week,” said Berdych. “It doesn’t matter that much if you drop a set or not, it’s just how it is. Sometimes you can fight through the whole tournament and then get to the final as well.
“I definitely felt that [del Potro] was going to be the toughest one so far in the tournament, that was for sure. As I started I already had the feeling that he is going to be right and that it was going to be a tough game. I was confident to go for the match; I believed in myself and that I could do it.”
The No. 11-ranked del Potro was on a 10-match winning streak, having come into Madrid on the back of his second title of the season at the Estoril Open (d. Gasquet). The Argentine was bidding to win his first ATP World Tour Masters 1000 crown this week.
“The match was really long, really close,” reflected del Potro. “I think that we won the same amount of points. But this is tennis and one of the two has to lose and he played the tie-breaks better than me. Those were the key points. The feeling is not the best because I lost. But he earned a lot of merit in the tie-break to win and he won fairly.”
The 26-year-old Berdych is through to his second final of the year having not dropped a set, including a 6-1, 6-2 thrashing of Rafael Nadal’s conqueror, Fernando Verdasco, in the quarter-finals. The right-hander captured his seventh ATP World Tour title with victory over Gael Monfils in Montpellier in February and has a 26-6 match record in 2012.
Bidding to win his second Masters 1000 crown, Berdych will face World No. 3 Roger Federer. Berdych won his lone Masters 1000 title at the BNP Paribas Masters in Paris in 2005 (d. Ljubicic) and was runner-up in the 2010 Miami final (l. to Roddick).
