Rediff

Dubai, Mar 3: Roger Federer won his 40th successive match on Friday, beating German Tommy Haas 6-4, 7-5 to reach the Dubai Open final.

The world number one next meets unseeded Russian Mikhail Youzhny, who overcame Swede Robin Soderling 7-5, 6-2 to reach his second final in two weeks.

Federer made a good start when he broke to lead 2-1. Games then went easily with serve until fifth seed Haas was 3-2 up in the second set.

The top seed faced three break points but hauled himself out of trouble, saving the third break point with a spectacular winner through his legs.

Haas then saved two break points at 3-3 as the dramatic rallies built.

The German echoed Federer by producing a winner through his legs at 5-4 before Haas played a poor game at 5-5, dropping his serve after a fine cross-court return from his opponent.

"It was extremely physical out there, a lot of tough points," Federer told reporters.

Break Points

"The second-set break I got was crucial after saving all those break points. Overall I thought that was an excellent performance, I rate it very highly."

Haas, who won the Memphis title last week, said: "I thought from the baseline it was pretty even, a few points here and there.

"I got a stupid break (against me) at the beginning of the match which is exactly what you don't want to do...I played as good as I could have."

Youzhny, who won the Rotterdam tournament last week and beat holder Rafael Nadal in the quarter-finals here, broke through against Soderling when the Swede made a backhand error to give the Russian a 6-5 lead.

After serving out the first set to love, Youzhny broke again to lead 1-0 in the second and Soderling was unable to rise to the challenge.

Youzhny was cheered on by a sizeable crowd of Russian supporters.

"Of course I was tired after playing Rafael but there were a lot of Russians here and they gave me power," said Youzhny.

"In the first game of the second set he made three or four mistakes. I didn't do anything."