General / Editor / 28 March 2007 /

today stands one win away from a place in the world's top 10 for the first time. All he has to do is beat Andy Roddick this afternoon in the quarter-finals of the Sony Ericsson Masters in Miami.

But already his efforts - and just about everyone else's left in the tournament - have been upstaged by comeback star Guilermos Canas. The Argentine player has done it again, beating Roger Federer for the second time in two weeks.

Canas, who only returned to the ATP Tour in September following a 15-month drugs ban, beat world number one Federer in the second round in Indian Wells in the opening Masters Series event of the season, the Pacific Life Open the week before last.

Now he has proved himself a Master again, coming from a break down in the final set to beat Federer 7-6 (2), 2-6, 7-6 (5) in an epic fourth-round battle in Miami. Federer lost just two matches on hard courts all last year. Now he has lost two in two weeks - to the same player.

When Canas started back in September he was ranked 514 in the world. Going into his quarter-final with Federer, he knew he would soar into the top 50.
He is trading at 8.4 on Betfair's Winner's market to lift the Miami title.

Federer will now spring into clay-court action and he plans to play Monte Carlo, Rome and Hamburg in his build-up to the French Open at the end of May before using Halle as his grass-court preparation for Wimbledon.

Canas, who had to win two rounds of qualifying to make the main draw, has a day off today before facing Tommy Robredo of Spain. The sixth seed put out Czech ace Radek Stepanek 7-6 (4) 5-7 7-6 (3) in their quarter-final.

The pair have not met since Canas returned to action late last year . The winner will face Ivan Ljubicic of Juan Ignacio Chela, who play in the other quarter-final from the top half of the draw tomorrow.

Ljubicic, the seventh-seeded Croatian, notched his 300th singles win by beating Finland's 20th seed Jarkko Nieminen 7-6 (4) 6-4 while Chela, the 23rd seed from Argentina, knocked out American qualifier Amer Delic 6-3 6-2.

In the bottom half of the draw 10th seed Novak Djokovic, the Serbian teenager who beat Murray in Indian Wells to earn his top 10 slot, outplayed Spanish qualifier Feliciano Lopez 6-0 6-3 to set up another clash with Rafael Nadal.

The 20-year-old Spaniard beat Djokovic in the Indian Wells final to lift his first title since the French Open last year and he set up the rematch with victory over Juan Martin Del Porto of Argentina 6-0 6-4.

The winner of the Djokovic-Nadal duel will face Murray or Roddick in the semi-finals. Roddick , the third seed, booked his place with a 7-5 6-3 win over Spain's 13th seed David Ferrer 7-5 6-3.

Murray is the only player in the bottom half of the draw to take three sets to reach the semi-finals. But then the young Scot is unbeaten this year in matches that have gone to three sets (8-0).

He came from a set down to beat Frenchman Paul-Henri Mathieu 2-6 7-5 6-3, the 12th seed saving two match points in the second set in the process. But he needed four match points of his own to get through.

Murray, who faces Roddick this afternoon, says he was inspired to victory by a wag in the crowd. He explained: "When I was a set and 5-3 down and at match point someone in the crowd called out 'Murray, you've got nothing'. That kind of spurred me on a little bit and I got a bit fired up after that.

Murray, who leads Roddick 3-2 in head to heads, beat the big-hitting American 7-6 (10) 6-4 in the semi-finals on the way to retaining his San Jose title in February - just as he had done in 2006 in San Jose - but then lost to him two weeks later in the Memphis semi-finals 6-3 7-6 (4).

Unlike his morning quarter-final, the
semi is an afternoon clash. "I was struggling a little bit to play first thing in the morning," he said of the match with Mathieu.
Maybe the afternoon will suit him better and he is trading at 2.22 with Betfair to reach the semi-finals in his last tournament before next week's Davis Cup clash with the Netherlands in Birmingham.

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