After a first round bye in the Bejing tournament, Richard defeated Yen-Hsun Lu from Taiwan 7-5 6-1, but was stopped by Rainer Schüttler in the quarterfinals 4-6 6-3 6-4.
It is always hard to comment matches without having seen a single ball. While Richard seemingly improved during the course of the match against Lu after a hesitant start, the opposite seems to have happened in the mtach against Schüttler. The serve got worse in every set and he could not use his numerous breakpoints.In the third set, he was two breaks down, he managed to get one back, but not the second and had to concede the match after 2 hours 21 minutes.
