MEMPHIS, Tennessee (AP)—Defending champion and top seed Andy Roddick moved into his ninth straight quarterfinal at the Regions Morgan Keegan Championships with a 7-6 (2), 6-4 victory over Yen-Hsun Lu of Taiwan on Thursday.
Fifth-seeded Tomas Berdych also made to the last eight, with the Czech fighting back to beat American Michael Russell 3-6, 6-3, 6-2.
Sam Querrey, the eighth-seeded American, also made it through with a 6-4, 6-0 thrashing of Argentina’s Leonardo Mayer.
Roddick, pushed to three challenging sets in a first-round win over James Blake, advanced to the quarterfinals in Memphis for the ninth straight year.
The American relied on 10 aces and a key break of serve to beat Lu, who at No. 114, was one of the lowest-ranked players in the 32-man field.
After failing to break Lu on seven earlier opportunities, Roddick converted on the eighth by double-fault. The mistake by Lu gave Roddick a 5-4 lead in the second set and he served out the match.
“It was good. But if I want to go further in this tournament I’ve got to do better on break points,” Roddick said. “That was really ordinary. The one I ended up getting was because he doubled.
“I’m doing a good job of getting (break points). I feel like I’m in every (opponent’s) service game, but I can’t miss second-serve returns at 15-30 or 30-all. I’m very close to playing really well. It’s just a matter of tightening things up to make that happen.”
Other winners in the men’s draw Thursday were Croatia’s Ivo Karlovic—a 6-4, 6-4 winner over Belgium’s Xavier Malisse—and Slovakia’s Lukas Lacko, who progressed when Jeremy Chardy of France retired when trailing 7-6 (4), 2-1.
In the women’s portion of the event—the Cellular South Cup—top-seeded Maria Sharapova continued her dominating march with a 6-2, 7-5 victory against Elena Baltacha of Great Britain to reach the semifinals.
Sharapova, the world’s 16th-ranked player, has not dropped a set and lost only 11 games in three matches in her first tournament since losing in the first round of the Australian Open last month.
Second-seeded Melanie Oudin, the 18-year-old American who stunned Sharapova at last year’s U.S. Open, was upset in the quarterfinals by qualifier and 2006 Memphis champion Sofia Arvidsson of Sweden. Arvidsson, who barely made it to Memphis in time to compete in the qualifying, won 6-1, 6-3.
“I didn’t arrive until an hour and a half before my qualifying,” she said. “I almost didn’t make it into the tournament. I’ve been lucky this week. I’ve been fighting through my matches. It’s been unbelievable.”
Czech Petra Kvitova also reached the semifinals by recovering from a slow start to overpower third-seeded Kaia Kanepi of Estonia 1-6, 6-3, 7-6 (0). Britain’s Anne Keothavong also moved into the last four with a 6-4, 6-3 defeat of Croatia’s Karolina Sprem.