Andy Murray upset defending champion Novak Djokovic with a 6-3, 7-6 (3) quarterfinal win Friday night at the Rogers Cup. Murray dominated Djokovic in the first set and held him off in the second. “It's not easy. You have to try to be as consistent as much as you can if you want to stay at the top,” Djokovic said. “You have players like Andy, still young and up and coming. ... “Now there's a lot of great players, and everybody is working hard to get to the top.” Murray, who had lost all four previous head-to-heads, chased down everything and made difficult shot after difficult shot. “It's a big win mentally for me,” Murray said. “You know, the last three times I played him, I lost pretty badly.” Djokovic, for his part, committed 36 unforced errors to Murray's 19, with 20 of those coming off his forehand. “In general, I was not really happy with my performance,” Djokovic said. Murray will play second-seeded Rafael Nadal in the semis after the Spanish star beat 10th-seeded Richard Gasquet of France 6-7 (12), 6-2, 6-1. Meanwhile, seventh-seeded James Blake became the latest big-name player to lose at the Rogers Cup when he was routed 6-1, 6-2 by Nicolas Kiefer of Germany. Kiefer, ranked 37th, will play Gilles Simon. Kiefer and Simon are the unlikely victors in a bracket that featured Roger Federer, Nikolay Davydenko, Andy Roddick and Blake. “I mean, I didn't even know what's happening,” said Simon, the 22nd-ranked Frenchman who defeated Croatia's Marin Cilic 3-6, 6-2, 6-3 on Friday. “I'm just so confident, I want to win every match, even if I'm tired. I know I'm playing very good at the moment.” Kiefer dispatched Blake 6-1, 6-2. He said the win wasn't quite as straight-forward as it looked. “It wasn't easy,” he said. “Maybe it looks easy, but I also have to play (at a) very high level.” Kiefer hasn't won an ATP tournament since 2000, in Hong Kong. But Simon wisely isn't taking anything for granted. “I just hope that we are going to play a great match with a great fight,” Simon said. “Even if I died on the court, yeah, I'll just give the maximum tomorrow.” Simon has already beaten Federer, American qualifier Donald Young and Argentina's Jose Acasuso in the tournament. The match between Simon and Cilic was far from a classic. The players combined for 104 unforced errors, including 64 by Cilic. The 19-year-old Cilic fired 37 winners, while Simon connected on just 15 - but that's his game. He kept the ball in play and waited for Cilic to make mistakes, which he frequently did. In doubles action, second-seeded Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonjic have moved on to the semifinals with a 7-6 (4), 6-4 win over France's Paul-Henri Mathieu and Russia's Mikhail Youzhny. They'll play seventh seeds Lukas Dlouhy of the Czech Republic and Leander Paes of India. Jankovic in semis Top-seeded Jelena Jankovic took another step toward the No. 1 ranking on the WTA Tour by beating ninth-seeded Nadia Petrova 7-5, 6-4 on Friday, advancing to the semifinals of the East West Bank Classic. Jankovic, 23, can take the top spot in the rankings from Serbian compatriot Ana Ivanovic if she wins this $600,000 hardcourt event. Next up is No. 4 Dinara Safina in Saturday's semifinal. Safina, of Russia, was a 6-3, 6-1 winner over No. 8 Victoria Azarenka, of Belarus. In the other quarterfinals, Italy's Flavia Pennetta was a 7-6 (3), 3-6, 6-1 winner over No. 14 Sybille Bammer, of Austria, and American Bethanie Mattek rallied from a 4-0 deficit in the second set to beat Meng Yuan, of China, 6-2, 7-5, in a matchup of unseeded players. Jankovic overcame an early service break in both sets against Petrova. “I did play the big points well. At the important times I was really able to hang in there and hit my spots,” Jankovic said, adding she wasn't bothered by the torn meniscus in her left knee, which she sustained at Wimbledon. “There were no problems whatsoever, no pain,” she said.
