DELRAY BEACH, Fla., (AP)—Mardy Fish reached the quarterfinals of the Delray Beach International Tennis Championships with a 6-4, 6-1 win over Vince Spadea on Thursday.
“We’ve always had tough matches,” Fish said. “We’ve had three-setters most every time if not every time. I think I’ve figured out what to do.”
Fish is 4-1 against Spadea, and all their previous meetings went the full three sets. Fish, who reached the final in 2003, is hoping to become the first top seed in the 17-year history of this tournament to score the winner’s trophy.
“It’s fun to be the marked guy and everybody is gunning for you,” said Fish, who reached the final in San Jose, Calif., earlier this month.
Fish will play sixth-seeded Florent Serra, who outlasted Mischa Zverev 6-3, 4-6, 6-4.
In Thursday night’s matches, seventh-seeded Jeremy Chardy reached his third quarterfinal of the year with a 7-6 (4), 7-5 win over Andrey Golubev.
Chardy reached his first career final in Johannesburg earlier this month.
Former Australian Open finalist Marcos Baghdatis, who outlasted close childhood friend, Dudi Sela 7-6 (7), 6-3 will face Chardy in the quarterfinals.
Baghdatis led 5-0 in the first-set tiebreaker, but Sela refused to give up without a fight and held one set point in the tiebreaker.
In the second set, Baghdatis raced to a 5-0 lead but lost the next three games before closing out the match.
“He wasn’t going to give up and I’m pretty happy I won,” said Baghdatis, coming off an injury plagued 2008. “I went through a tough match today and I’m looking forward to the next match.”
Spadea, who reached at least the quarters here every year since 2004, has been fighting a virus and fever since playing his first-round match for his first tour-level victory since Los Angeles in August.
“I think there are some factors, and those factors being that he’s improved, he’s playing well and I was under-conditioned,” Spadea said. “I just didn’t have a lot of energy out there and my whole game thrives on energy and grinding and getting an extra ball back and winning ugly, really.”
Serra, who was behind 3-0 in the third set, won the match with an exquisite crosscourt drop volley from his heels.
“It’s very important for me to be in the quarterfinal,” Serra said. “I need to serve better tomorrow because he serves very good and my return is OK, but I need to focus on my own service percentage.”
The two other quarterfinal pairings were decided on Wednesday—qualifier Evgeny Korolev will face Guillermo Garcia-Lopez and 2000 Delray Beach champion Stefan Koubek faces Christophe Rochus.
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