After beating Feliciano Lopez in his comeback match in the
first round on Monday, the 2009 US Open champion lost to the unseeded Mayer in
74 minutes. Del Potro dropped his serve three times in the match including,
crucially, at 5-5 in the second set.
Mayer said later it was clear del Potro was not yet 100
percent after a long battle with a wrist injury last year.
“You could see he's not 100 percent,” Mayer said. “His serve
is really strong but from the baseline he missed a lot.
“I think also he was maybe a little bit tired from his long
match Monday because when you don't play for such a long time and you play your
first match over three hours, it's really tough.
“But I really played well from the baseline. I knew when I
played my game I had a good chance to win today, and I took it.” Top-seeded Sam
Querrey of the United States also exited, losing 6-4, 6-3 to Alexandr
Dolgopolov of Ukraine.
Before his win on Monday, del Potro's last tour-level
victory came against Mayer in the third round of the 2010 Australian Open. Del
Potro was sidelined for most of the 2010 season, causing him to drop out of the
world's top 200.
“Of course I want to play and win a tournament,” del Potro
said.
“When you lose, it's hard. But now it's different. I have
different sensations. I lost, but I have another tournament in three days. I'm
in good shape. I have my wrist in good shape. That's good.” Querrey was making
his first appearance after a first-round bye. He became the first top seed to
lose his Sydney opener in seven years. His demise, following women's top seed
Caroline Wozniacki's on Tuesday, marked the first time since 2002 that both top
seeds lost their first matches.
Before facing Querrey, Dolgopolov had to finish off
Australian qualifier Bernard Tomic. Their first-round match was stopped by rain
on Tuesday after a set apiece, and Dolgopolov wrapped it up 6-7 (3), 6-1, 6-2.
Third-seeded Ernests Gulbis of Latvia beat Igor Andreev of
Russia 2-6, 6-4, 6-3 to reach his second quarterfinals in two weeks. Gulbis
made a shaky start, losing his serve twice in the opening set. But he broke
Andreev once in each of the last two sets and dropped only five points on serve
in the final set, finishing with 17 aces.
Gulbis' quarterfinal opponent will be Ukrainian Sergiy
Stakhovsky, who beat seventh-seeded Guillermo Garcia-Lopez of Spain 6-3, 6-4.
Last year's finalist and No. 5-seeded Richard Gasquet came
back from a set down to beat Italian Andreas Seppi 3-6, 7-5, 6-4 in 2 hours, 4
minutes. Gasquet next meets fourth-seeded Serbian Viktor Troicki, who beat
former finalist Juan Ignacio Chela of Argentina 6-2, 6-3.
Troicki converted four of 11 break point chances.
Frenchman Gilles Simon earned a quarterfinal spot by winning
two matches on Wednesday. He completed a 6-0, 6-3 win over No. 8-seeded
Yen-hsun Lu, in a rain-delayed match, then beat Portugal's Frederico Gil 6-1,
6-3.
In the women's quarterfinals, eighth-seeded Li Na of China
beat Svetlana Kuznetsova 3-6, 7-6 (4), 6-3 from 6-3, 5-3 down.
“I didn't want to have any regrets after the match so I just
tried to calm down,” Li said.
She'll meet Bojana Jovanovski, the Serbian qualifier who
beat Flavia Pennetta of Italy 6-4, 6-1 to reach her first WTA semifinals.
No. 3-seeded Kim Clijsters beat No. 7 Victoria Azarenka 6-3,
6-2 in 85 minutes to advance to a semifinal against Alisa Kleybanova of Russia.
Kleybanova topped Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia 6-3, 5-7, 6-2.
