Blake can’t play the break

NEW YORK -- This time, it was a man named Haas who slipped away from James Blake in another beguiling, and often bewildering, U.S. Open encounter.

Two years ago, it was Andre Agassi who escaped under the late-night lights in the quarterfinals. Monday, on a brilliant Labor Day afternoon in New York, Tommy Haas did the same in the fourth round.

But for Blake, there was one key difference in the two fifth-set tiebreaker losses. Unlike in the Agassi match, Blake had three match points against Haas before exiting.

They came in the 10th game of the fifth set. Haas saved the first with a big serve wide and a forehand winner, and fought off the other two with service winners.

The 10th-seeded Haas defeated No. 6 Blake, 4-6, 6-4, 3-6, 6-0, 7-6 (4), in 3 hours 17 minutes, and will play No. 4 Nikolay Davydenko in the quarterfinals. He won it with an ace but had to wait for the replay system to confirm the call after Blake challenged it. Haas challenged one point earlier, on his first match point; Blake’s passing shot, called in, was shown to have clipped the baseline.

Victory delayed was fitting in a match full of momentum switches.

Also moving on, in much quicker fashion, was No. 5 Andy Roddick, who advanced when No. 9 Tomas Berdych retired with Roddick leading, 7-6 (6), 2-0. Berdych quit under somewhat curious conditions; he said he did not feel well but couldn’t really explain what was truly wrong with him.

That makes two consecutive opponents who have failed to finish against Roddick because of illness or injury. In the quarterfinals Roddick will play top-seeded Roger Federer, who has had to deal with his opponents the old-fashioned way -- by actually completing matches.

On Monday night he looked sluggish early on against a tricky, hard-serving left-hander, Feliciano Lopez, before turning on the afterburners late in the second set. The three-time defending champion beat Lopez, 3-6, 6-4, 6-1, 6-4, in 2 hours, committing one unforced error in the second set and putting on a magnificent serving performance in the final two sets.

Federer trailed, 0-40, in the first game of the third set, saved the three break points, then did not lose another point on his serve until the final game of the match.

“He was playing fantastic the first two sets, really,” Federer said in his on-court TV interview. “Well, you always hope he’s not going to continue playing that well and try to find something positive.”

Federer, who had 11 aces, has won 25 straight matches at the U.S. Open and is 13-1 in his career against Roddick.

“It’s a great record, but it doesn’t help me,” Federer said, diplomatically.

As for Roddick, he needed to hit the practice court for an extra hitting session because the Berdych match lasted a mere hour.

Of course, Blake didn’t have that problem. He is now 1-10 in five-set matches, and the lone victory came here last week in the second round against 34-year-old Fabrice Santoro. For all of Santoro’s vaunted guile and panache, he has never gone past the third round at the U.S. Open.

Blake had to be better against Haas. He was, but it was not enough.

“It’s going to sting for a little while,” said Blake, who squandered an early service-break lead in the second set as well. “It’s pretty tough, but I feel I had all the conditions in my favor today. I had the crowd on my side. Court conditions. The courts are suited to my game. It’s also suited to Tommy’s game.

“Any time you get in a fifth-set tiebreaker, it’s clearly a crapshoot. Just about anyone can beat anyone on this tour in a tiebreaker. When it comes down to one tiebreaker for a match, absolutely anything can happen.”

The point of the tiebreaker -- and perhaps the match -- came at 3-3 with Haas serving. He needed two lobs to win the point. Blake tracked down the first but the second curled just over his outstretched racket.

“The first one was just like a reaction,” Haas said. “He made a [great] get. The ball curved back deep. I just hit the slice backhand. He came in. I felt like, ‘OK, let’s try it again.’ It went over his head and went in. What a point, yeah. I think if I would have lost that point, the crowd would have gone absolutely ballistic.

“That might have given him an extra edge, the adrenaline to maybe -- who knows? I mean, it’s over.”

Other than Roddick’s victory, it wasn’t a good day for American men’s tennis. Bob and Mike Bryan, the No. 1-seeded men’s doubles team from Camarillo, were upset by 10th-seeded Simon Aspelin of Sweden and Julian Knowle of Austria, 7-5, 6-4, in the quarterfinals.

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