Chardy upsets fifth seed Cilic; Kukushkin ousts No. 7 Ancic
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -- Two Croatian stars, fifth-seeded Marin Cilic and seventh-seeded Mario Ancic, were upset Tuesday in the first round of the St. Petersburg Open.
Jeremy Chardy of France beat Ancic 6-4, 3-6, 6-4, and Kazakh qualifier Mikhail Kukushkin saved two match points before ousting Cilic 7-6 (4), 4-6, 7-6 (6).
Cilic, ranked No. 23, had two match points at 6-4 in the tiebreak, but the 158th-ranked Kukushkin won four consecutive points for his first career victory over a seeded player in an ATP event. Cilic had 19 aces to Kukushkin's 10.
Second-seeded Nikolay Davydenko beat Chris Guccione 6-4, 6-4, and 2007 finalist Fernando Verdasco, seeded third, rallied past Russian qualifier Teimuraz Gabashvili 1-6, 6-4, 6-3.
Fourth-seeded Mikhail Youzhny of Russia, the tournament winner in 2002 and 2004, defeated Ivan Navarro of Spain 6-2, 6-1.
Gabashvili won five consecutive games in the first set, but Verdasco broke early in the second set to stay in the match. The third-seeded Spaniard broke in the sixth game of the third set.
The 74th-ranked Chardy capitalized on Ancic's double-fault in the fifth game to take the first set. Ancic, ranked 36th, evened the match with a break in the eighth game of the second set and had an early break in the decider to go up 3-1.
Chardy broke back to 3-3 and saved two break points in the ninth game before closing with the second match point on Ancic's serve.
Also, Russian wild card Michail Elgin beat Filippo Volandri of Italy 6-4, 6-4, and Karlis Lijnieks of Latvia rallied to oust Alexandre Kudryavtsev of Russia 3-6, 7-6 (1), 6-3.
Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press
