MELBOURNE, Australia -- Marcos Baghdatis needed five sets to defeat Marat Safin 6-4, 6-4, 2-6, 3-6, 6-2 Thursday at the Australian Open, evoking memories of his run to the 2006 final.
The marquee matchup of the night was packed with drama -- long rallies, seemingly impossible winners and shifts in momentum.
Baghdatis appeared to be on his way to a straight-sets victory, looked down and out, then pulled himself together to set up a third-round meeting with another former No. 1, Lleyton Hewitt.
Earlier, Venus Williams overcame a lethargic outing, committing 44 unforced errors and dropping her serve four times in a row, to beat Camille Pin 7-5, 6-4, while top-seeded Roger Federer was impressive again in ending friend Fabrice Santoro's record 62nd Grand Slam tournament 6-1, 6-2, 6-0.
The mercurial Safin, the 2005 champion who has slipped to No. 56 because of a rash of injuries, tossed his racket twice in frustration while falling behind, then broke it after dropping serve early in the fifth set.
Both players took tumbles on the court, with Safin making a lunging layout to pick off a passing shot for a winner and Baghdatis awkwardly doing the splits when he slipped on the dead run.
The 15th-seeded Baghdatis constantly rallied two years ago, feeding off the energy from vocal fans from Melbourne's large Greek community, before he lost the final to Roger Federer.
His beard and ponytail are gone, but the support was there again, and Baghdatis fed off it.
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| Venus Williams frustrates herself at times, but perseveres against Camille Pin and advances. (Getty Images) |
Baghdatis pulled ahead 3-0 in the fifth set and never yielded the advantage despite constant pressure from Safin. He finished off the victory in 3 hours, 13 minutes by breaking Safin for the fifth time when a forehand went long on match point.
The rowdy fans included a group of young men wearing white face masks and sunglasses who chanted "pepper spray" -- a reference to an incident two nights earlier when police used pepper spray to subdue three spectators during a match between Fernando Gonzalez of Chile and Konstantinos Economidis of Greece.
The Federer-Santoro match went by so quickly that Santoro asked him to wait a moment on match point, pointing to the scoreboard and smiling. The Swiss star got a chuckle out of it, too, then got in a serve-and-volley winner.
"It was a tough match for me," Santoro said. "It was not easy to have fun, but I tried to have some."
