Fifth seed David Ferrer qualified for the semi-finals at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals on Wednesday night, with a 6-3, 6-1 win over World No. 1 Novak Djokovic in front of a sell-out 17,500-strong crowd at The O2 in London, according to atpworldtour.com.
Ferrer, who beat Djokovic en route to the 2007 final in Shanghai, improved to a 58-17 match record on the season with victory in 76 minutes. It was only Djokovic’s fifth loss of the year and he is now 6-5 lifetime against Ferrer.
“I am very motivated,” said Ferrer, according to the same source. “I am in the semi-finals. I want to enjoy this moment. I don’t want to think about the semi-final on Saturday. I think maybe today was my best match of the season. I felt good before the match. Maybe the key was in my serve. The last times against Nole, I haven’t served really good.”
“All the credit to Ferrer, he played great match,” said Djokovic. “It was the worst match I’ve played this season so far definitely. So many unforced errors. I’m not playing well – that’s a fact. At this level you know that you have to deliver your best tennis. I wasn’t on my best in the first match [against Tomas Berdych], but I managed to kind of get into the rhythm in the second set. This match, I have no words to explain. Nothing was going really [for me]. Nothing was going well. He was playing smart, changing rhythm. You always can kind of expect and predict what he’s going to come up on the court with. He doesn’t drop with the level that much. He’s always focused, always fighting for each point. He’s a great player. He deserved to win.”
The 29-year-old Ferrer, who beat third seed Andy Murray 6-4, 7-5 on Monday, will next face seventh seed Berdych in the last of the round-robin matches on Friday. Djokovic now challenges his Serbian compatriot, Janko Tipsarevic, who replaced Murray in the group.
