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The Honolulu Advertiser
Updated at 5:12 p.m., Saturday, July 26, 2008

Tennis: Kiefer, Nadal reach final at Rogers Cup

Associated Press

TORONTO — Rafael Nadal beat Andy Murray of Britain 7-6 (2), 6-3 to reach the final of the Rogers Cup tonight and put himself in line for his seventh title of the year.

He'll face Nicolas Kiefer, who reached the championship with a 6-7 (4), 6-3, 7-6 (5) win over Gilles Simon today.

Nadal, who won in Toronto in 2005, won the French Open and Wimbledon earlier this year. In three career meetings, he's never a set to Kiefer.

Kiefer hasn't won an ATP event since 2000 in Hong Kong and hasn't appeared in a final since 2005 in St. Petersburg.

The match lasted 2 hours, 59 minutes, mostly filled with groundstrokes from the baseline. As he's done all tournament, Simon played patiently, kept the ball in play and waited for Kiefer to make mistakes. And, again, it worked, as Kiefer made 69 unforced errors.

"I didn't play my best tennis, but in the important moments I could pick up my game and I was playing pretty good," Kiefer said.

But Simon made a few too many of errors of his own. Up 5-4 in the third set, Simon had a ball gently bounce high in front of him and he primed for an overhead smash, before launching the ball into the bottom of the net.

He finished with 32 unforced errors of his own, and only capitalized on three of 13 break point chances.