Dudi Sela battled world No. 13 Gilles Simon for three hours and eight minutes but loses in the end.
By ALLON SINAIANDY MURRAY 390(photo credit: REUTERS)
Dudi Sela battled world No. 13 Gilles Simon for three hours and eight minutes on Saturday, fighting back from a set and 5-2 down only to lose 7-5, 6-7 (6), 6-4 in the second round of the Indian Wells ATP tournament.The 26-year-old Israeli, ranked No. 63 in the world, seemed to be heading to a straight-sets defeat after Simon held serve to open a 5-2 lead in the second set.However, Sela saved a match point in the eighth game and another in the tiebreak before sending the match to a decisive set, which he led 3-1, only to be broken right back and eventually fall to a painful defeat.Meanwhile, world No. 1 Novak Djokovic eased into the third round on Saturday while fourth-seeded Andy Murray made a premature exit.Djokovic, champion here in 2008 and last year, handed out a 6-3, 6-2 thrashing to Kazakhstan qualifier Andrey Golubev, breaking his opponent’s serve twice in each set to triumph in one hour 20 minutes.“It was a good start,” the top-seeded Serb said in a courtside interview after sealing the win with a powerful first serve that forced a wild backhand error by his 145th-ranked opponent.World No. 4 Murray, runner-up at Indian Wells in 2009, was upset 6-4, 6-2 by 92nd-ranked Spaniard Guillermo Garcia- Lopez, the second year in a row the Briton was eliminated in his opening match at Indian Wells.Reuters contributed to this report
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