Andy Murray, the first British male since the 1930’s to reach three Grand Slam finals, earned a valuable revenge over Tomas Berdych as he reached the semi-finals of the Dubai Open for the first time here Thursday. The third-seeded Scot won 6-3, 7-5 against the fifth-seeded Czech to whom he lost the last three times, making it his best sequence in four attempts at the lucrative Middle East tournament.
It also earned Murray a possible rematch with Novak Djokovic, the triple Grand Slam titleholder with whom he had a classic semi-final in last month’s Australian Open. Djokovic was due to play his fellow Serb Janko Tipsarevic in the evening session. The match ended in controversy as Berdych argued at length with the umpire over a Hawkeye decision when he had earned a point to break back for 6-6. Murray’s appeal to the computer replay showed that the line judge’s call of fault had been wrong and that his unreturned serve had in fact been in. But when the umpire awarded the point to Murray, Berdych claimed the rally should have been replayed.
The Czech argued that the line judge’s call had interfered with his return of serve, but TV replays showed that the call came after Berdych had hit the ball, and that the umpire’s decision was correct. Berdych said he was “shocked” by the decision of umpire Mohamed Lahyani, from Sweden. “If we look at all the rule books we going to see that if it’s not a clear ace there is a repeat of point actually,” the Czech claimed.
“I have no idea what Mohamed did. He is the best referee on tour and I never had anything like that with him.” Murray said: “It’s a bad rule, and one that I have a big problem with. “It comes down to kind of how the umpire sees it. You know, they don’t always see it the same way as the players do. Sometimes it goes your way; sometimes it doesn’t.” Murray went on to close the match out in that game, although he required six more rallies and seven match points altogether before doing it.
The Scot had controlled much of the first half of the match by denying Berdych as many opportunities as possible to wind up with fierce flat drives which are especially dangerous on Dubai’s hot, fast hard surfaces.
