Published: 15 August, 2009, 13:38
Edited: 15 August, 2009, 13:38
Nikolay Davydenko has been knocked out of the Rogers Masters in Montreal after losing to Andy Murray in the quarter-finals. Favorites Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic followed the same path.
Davydenko came into the contest on a 12-match winning streak, but Murray, playing his first event since Wimbledon, capitalized on a string of errors from the eighth seed to take the opener 6-2.
The Scot converted all four of his break points in the match, with the last one coming in the final game of the match when Davydenko went long with yet another unforced error. 6-2, 6-4 was the final score, as Murray moves through to the last four.
Murray will now play Jo Wilfred Tsonga, after the Frenchman dispatched world number one Roger Federer in the kind of match one would want to see over and over again.
After losing the opener, Federer raced through the second 6-1 and led 5-1 in the decider, before his form suddenly deserted him in dramatic fashion. The Swiss proceeded to lose his serve twice as Tsonga took a 6-5 lead in the third, with the sell-out crowd in a frenzy.
Federer had to save three match points to force a tie breaker, but Tsonga fired two aces to take a 6-3 lead before Federer double-faulted on match point.
Tsonga's stunning fightback ended a run of 21 successive wins for Federer.
Elsewhere, fifth-seeded Andy Roddick was forced to fight back from a second-set service break down to Novak Djokovic. The American rallied to claim a memorable 6-4, 7-6 victory over the Serbian – his third win so far this year over Djokovic.
In the semi-finals, he will meet Juan Martin Del Potro, who ended Rafael Nadal's campaign in straight sets. Nadal looked far from his best from the outset, eventually being broken by Del Potro twice, the latter gaining a 3-0 lead in the second to wrap up a 7-6, 6-1 win over the defending champion.