Rusedski bows out
Greg Rusedski tonight crashed out of Wimbledon in the first round after suffering a straight-sets defeat to Russian Marat Safin.
The British number one lost 6-4 6-4 6-4 and, with his 33rd birthday approaching in September, could conceivably have played his last match at the All England Club.
Rusedski, hampered by a hip injury in his build-up to the championships, started brightly and held serve comfortably in the early stages.
But former Australian and US Open champion Safin was looking in determined mood on his least favourite surface and broke in the seventh game for a 4-3 lead.
Safin then served out to take the set 6-4 and leave Rusedski facing an uphill battle to improve on his poor Wimbledon record, with a solitary quarter-final appearance in 1997 his best performance in 14 attempts.
Much has been made of the relative slowness of the balls and courts in SW19, but this match was still being dominated by big serves and short rallies.
It was always going to boil down to a handful of points and it was Safin who was playing the crucial ones far better.
After the first eight games of the second set went with serve, the 26-year-old produced two brilliant returns to force the crucial break – the first an outright winner on the forehand and the second on the backhand forcing Rusedski to push his forehand long.
Safin then served out to take it 6-4 and take a stranglehold on the match.
Both players had chances to break early in the third set on court two, known as the ’Graveyard of Champions,’ but it took until the seventh game for Safin to make the breakthrough.
Rusedski completely mishit a straightforward forehand to send the ball sailing over the baseline, then dumped a similar shot tamely into the net to put his opponent 4-3 ahead.
Safin had won 11 and lost 10 of his 21 matches in 2006 before this week, including losing in the first round of the French Open as he struggled to rediscover his best form after a serious knee injury which ruled him out of the second half of last season.
But there were few signs of any problems as more thunderous serving wrapped up the match and booked his place in the last 64.
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