Brooding giant Safin refuses to exit party

WIMBLEDON: STOP ALL the clocks, cut off the telephone. Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos . . .WH Auden's poem is a lament; and for some years Marat Safin was gone, a 28-year-old serving out the remnants of a moribund career and far from the minds of those players who sought to win Grand Slam tournaments.

Safin was the waster, the playboy, who when asked what he spent his money on replied with a dismissive flick of his hand, "Cars, lots of cars." He was never the player to apply himself or totally accede to the principle that sustained success required marriage to commitment, and his destiny seemed to be that his whole career would be a mournful elegy for a wasted, broken talent.

The Russian who affronted authorities a few years ago when he said he hated grass, hated the All England Club, yesterday secured a place in his first Wimbledon semi-final and will meet the champion, Roger Federer.

It promises to be a match that pitches everything deemed to be orthodox and wholesome in the game against the sport's bête noir. The brilliant, surly, 6ft 4in Russian rogue has, like Goran Ivanisevic back in 2001, set the draw alight.

"Shit happens," growled Safin when reminded of his distaste for grass. "I'm surprised I'm still here."

It is unusual for the double Grand Slam winner to achieve any result without drama or attitude, and when he looks back at his 3-6, 7-5, 7-6 (7-1), 6-3 win over Spain's Feliciano Lopez, Safin, the one player who knows irony and berates authority, may have a laugh over the fact that a line judge may have saved his hide.

It was in the fourth set in this tightly balanced match when Lopez was about to hold serve to stay in the match that Safin left a ball he was not going to reach anyway because a line judge had made a noise during the point. To the fury of the Spaniard, the umpire upheld Safin's complaint of "interference".

Lopez finally double faulted to hand Safin the match.

"I'm tired of making comebacks every year. It's annoying. But it's my life," said Safin. "I had started to think I'd lost it completely. Nothing worked. Last year I was losing first rounds left and right. I was really desperate and didn't know what to do."

His sense in victory was one more of relief than of happiness. and when he steps into Federer's court tomorrow, his expectations will not soar out of hand.

"To beat Federer you need to be Nadal and run around like a rabbit and hit winners from all over the place," he said dolefully. "It's another chance for me. But it is just a little bit too difficult for me to beat him."

Don't believe it, although there is smooth and there is Roger-Federer-smooth. Yesterday Federer was smooth, that is Roger-Federer-smooth, which is smoother than most, smoother than anything on two legs around SW19.

Still with us? With an economy of effort Federer adroitly played his way into his 17th Grand Slam semi-final against Mario Ancic, a player whose ability was confined to glimpses over 100 minutes.

It was the sort of elevated performance the Swiss world number one wanted just a step away from his sixth successive Wimbledon final, one in which the sum of Ancic's resistance was confined to one 16-minute game in the third set.

Federer dropped only one point on his serve in the first set, cleaning Ancic out in a breathless 20 minutes. Then when Ancic double faulted to hand him a service break in the second set, the number one stepped up and gratefully served for 7-5.

On Wimbledon grass, on Centre Court, in a quarter-final and seeking to become the first man to break the record of Bjorn Borg he equalled last year, Federer had reason to be miserly and urgent.

For Ancic there was no way back. First game up in the third set Federer thought he would remove Ancic's heart and for 16 minutes threatened to take his serve. Ten deuces later and four break points saved, Ancic limped on a condemned man.

Federer won the next service game in 74 seconds and by the fourth game had what he wanted and almost effortlessly broke Ancic's serve for 3-2. Holding serve, he aced the Croatian on match point for 6-1, 7-5, 6-4 and his 64th successive win on grass.

Andy Murray would have felt similar anxieties to Ancic, and he felt the full weight of Rafael Nadal's game last night when ending a successful but ultimately doomed run, battered into submission 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 in under two hours.

The Scot could not complain, Nadal again executing his powerfully simple game in front of the partisan Centre Court crowd to impertinently inflict a drubbing.

"I played probably my best match here," said Nadal. "I tried to play very aggressive all the time with big power and tried to attack his second serve. For sure he will have good chances to win here at Wimbledon, get into the top five."

The brutally efficient Spaniard converted one from four break points in the first set as he successfully harried Murray's serve and held his own effortlessly.

He broke again twice in the second set for 6-2 and once in the third, Murray not once earning a single break point throughout. A learning curve perhaps but British hopes are again dashed and now Murray has been eliminated the BBC are again calling him Scottish. Little has changed.

Nadal will meet either Rainer Schüttler of Germany or Arnaud Clément of France in the semi-final. The unseeded pair were locked in battle last night, Schüttler taking the first set 6-3 but his opponent fighting back to take the second 7-5, when fading light stopped play.

Whoever wins will need a miracle to get past the Spaniard.