Richard reached the quarter finals in Miami for the first time in his career after beating Mikhael Youzhny 6-3 6-4 and disposing Nicolas Almagro 6-7 7-5 7-6. His next opponent will be the winner of Berdych/Querrey.
While the win against the Russian was a rather straight forward affair, Richard had to dig deep to get rid of the Spaniard. 2 breaks down in the first set, he managed the rebreaks and had even set points on Amagro's serve, but played a poor breaker. In the second set, Richard was never in danger on serve, but needed 6 breakpoints to finally take the set 7-5.
In the third set, Richard fended of breakpoints in his first service game, but broke the Spaniard in the 7th game, only to lose his serve right thereafter. But he kept his nerve and while Almagro started the breaker with a double fault, Richard scored 3 aces for a 7-3 tiebreak win.
