Troicki has marathon win at Moscow

Defending champion Viktor Troicki survived a three-tiebreaker match Friday and moved into the semifinals of the Kremlin Cup tennis tournament in Moscow. Troicki, seeded second this year, won his first ATP tournament title in Moscow a year ago and had posted a straight-set, second-round win to get to the quarterfinals. But Alex Bogomolov Jr. made Troicki work before he could emerge with a 7-6 (8-6), 6-7 (1-7), 7-6 (7-1) victory. The match took 3 hours, 38 minutes and covered 288 points. Each player lost serve four times, including twice each in the third set. Troicki won eight more points (148-140) over the day than Bogomolov, but six of those came in the third-set tiebreaker. No. 1-seeded Janko Tipsarevic was on the court just one-third as long in taking a 6-4, 6-2 decision from sixth-seeded Dmitry Tursunov. Tipsarevic lost eight points in nine service games. Fourth-seeded Nikolay Davydenko topped Michael Berrer 6-3, 6-2, and Jeremy Chardy beat Philipp Kohlschreiber 6-4, 6-3 in Friday's other matches. Saturday's semifinals have Tipsarevic playing Davydenko while Troicki takes on Chardy.