HAMBURG, 16 May 2006 — Former French Open champion Carlos Moya yesterday crashed out in the first round of the 2.08-million euro Hamburg Masters where the world’s leading tennis players Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal won’t be playing at all due to exhaustion.
Moya, who lifted the Paris Grand Slam trophy in 1998, wasted a 3-1 lead in the final set to lose 6-3, 3-6, 7-5 against fifth-seeded American James Blake in 2 hours 13 minutes.
Other casualties on the court yesterday included the 2003 Hamburg champion and 2004 French Open runner-up Guillermo Coria of Argentina as well as Russian Marat Safin, a two-time Hamburg finalist.
Federer, the world No. 1 and three-time Hamburg champion, and Nadal, the hottest player on clay and reigning French Open champion, withdrew in the wake of their five-hour marathon in the Rome Masters Series final Sunday which Nadal won in a fifth-set tiebreak.
Nadal will now not aim at a record 54th straight clay court win until the Paris Grand Slam which starts on May 29. Federer also has no further matches scheduled before the only major he is yet to win.
Blake said he could understand that the prominent duo will not play in Hamburg 48 hours after the Rome final, their first-round games originally set for today.
The 31st-ranked Moya won the clay event in Buenos Aires this year and was a semifinalist in Estoril. But the 1998 French Open champion remains winless at the Masters events on the surface, having also crashed in the first round in Monte Carlo and Rome.
Blake raced off to a 3-0 lead and went on to take the first set as well as breaking Moya in the opening game of the second. Moya raised his game to overcome the deficit and lock the sets and seemed on course to victory when he broke Blake for 2-1 in the final set.
But Blake broke back for 3-3, wasted two match points at 5-4, and then overcame cramps late in the game to win on his third attempt with his 39th winner of the match to Moya’s 23.
Moya was in good company as the 10th-seeded Coria continued his indifferent season with a 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 defeat against Novak Djokovic, an 18-year-old qualifier from Serbia and Montenegro.
Eleven seed Thomas Johansson of Sweden lost 6-3, 6-4 against Paul-Henri Mathieu and Safin crashed against another qualifier, Brazil’s Flavio Saretta, 5-7, 6-0, 6-4.
Myskina Manages First Season
Success on Clay
In Rome, former French Open champion Anastasia Myskina won her first match of the season on clay yesterday, squeezing past Victoria Azarenka 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (8-6) to reach the second round of the $1.34-million Rome Masters.
Myskina, seeded tenth, has won only two trophies since here surprise success in Paris nearly two years ago. Her delayed clay start this spring was marked by a first-round upset loss to a local in Warsaw this month.
The world No. 13 has a modest record at the Foro Italico, with 2002 and 2004 quarterfinals her best performances.
But the day’s Russian progress was halted as Italy’s stuck back for the hosts, with 40th-ranked Mara Santangelo defeating Maria Kirilenko 3-6, 6-3, 7-5.
Swiss comeback queen Martina Hingis returned to Rome for the first time in five years and crushed an Italian qualifier to reach the second round in style.
Hingis, unseeded on a ranking of 21st as her return to the game heads toward its sixth month, was untroubled by number 219 Sara Errani, winning 6-0, 6-1. It took just 55 minutes for Hingis, a veteran at 25 who won all five of her Grand Slam crowns before turning 20, to administer a tennis lesson.
After returning to the game in January after a three-year retirement, Hingis is fully back in her element.
Against Errani, Hingis ran out a 6-0, 4-0 margin before the challenger actually won a game. “My level dropped a bit in the closing stages of the match, but I got it all back,” said Hingis. Hingis faces one of the new generation in the second round when she takes on 12th-seeded Czech Nicole Vaidisova, who put out Finn Emma Laine 5-7, 6-1, 6-3.
