ROME - A sporting gesture backfired badly for Andy Roddick as Spain's Fernando Verdasco came back from the brink of defeat to beat the top seed 6-7 7-6 6-4 in the last 16 of the Rome Masters tennis event today.
French Open champion Gaston Gaudio slumped to a 6-0 6-1
defeat to Spain's David Ferrer, and fourth seed Tim Henman lost 6-3 3-6 6-3 to Dominik Hrbaty, of Slovakia.
The exodus of leading players left Spanish teenager Rafael Nadal as the highest-ranked player in the draw. The fifth seed, who has won four claycourt titles this year, continued his run of superb form with a 6-3 6-1 victory over Guillermo Canas.
One set down and serving at 3-5 and 0-40 in the second, Verdasco seemed on the brink of defeat against Roddick - even more so when his second serve was called out and the umpire started to announce the American as the winner.
Roddick, however, corrected the call, telling the umpire the ball was in. Verdasco went on to hold serve and break his distracted-looking opponent in the following game.
The set went to a tiebreak, which the Spaniard took easily with a series of whipped crosscourt winners.
Roddick then put a forehand wide to drop serve in the opening game of the decider and the unseeded Verdasco went on to claim victory.
His reward will be a quarterfinal against fellow claycourt specialist and ninth seed Guillermo Coria, of Argentina, who crushed home favourite Davide Sanguinetti 6-0 6-4.
"Maybe I should have stood on the mark," Roddick said.
"I don't think I did anything extraordinary, the umpire would have come down and said the same too. I just saved him the trip.
"When he (Verdasco) hit it, before I saw the mark, I thought it was out. On a hardcourt I wouldn't have done anything but then I walked back and saw it was good."
Sixth seed Andre Agassi remained on course to repeat his 2002 victory in Rome.
The American, 35, gave a near-faultless display to beat Ivan Ljubicic 7-6 6-3.
The big-serving Croatian has reached four finals this year and had won his last two matches against Agassi, including one contest in the Davis Cup earlier this season.
In other third-round matches Spain's Alberto Martin beat Luis Horna, of Peru 6-1 6-3, and 15th seed Radek Stepanek eliminated Nicolas Almagro, the qualifier who beat Marat Safin yesterday, 4-6 6-4 6-2.
- REUTERS
ROME - A sporting gesture backfired badly for Andy Roddick as Spain's Fernando Verdasco came back from the brink of defeat to beat the top seed 6-7 7-6 6-4 in the last 16 of the Rome Masters tennis event today.
French Open champion Gaston Gaudio slumped to a 6-0 6-1
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