Fish to face Gulbis for Los Angeles title

By Bill Scott Jul 31, 2011, 4:52 GMT

Los Angeles - Mardy Fish and Ernests Gulbis will meet for the first time as they play the Sunday final of the Farmers Classic with Fish aiming to win two titles in as many weeks.

The American top seed fought off a comeback from compatriot Ryan Harrison 6-0, 4-6, 7-6 (7-3) on Saturday to beat the player a decade his junior for the second straight week in a semi-final.

Fish, last weekend's Atlanta champion, also beat the 19-year-old seven days ago.

He will play for a seventh career trophy against Gulbis who has begun a turnaround after ending a five-match loss streak at the start of the week and carrying the momentum into a second career final 18 months after his first in Delray Beach,.

Gulbis, who knocked out second seed and 2009 US Open winner Juan Del Potro in the quarters at UCLA, ended the dream run of American journeyman Alex Bogomolov 6-2, 7-6 (7-4) with 33 winners.

The former number 21 Gulbis is working to improve his current ranking of 84th after a season or more of poor results.

'I liked the first set, it was short and sweet,' joked Gulbis, who said that had he lost early this week 'I would have dropped to around 1,000 in the rankings.

'Being in the final is very big for me, I'm on a comeback and this is a boost for my confidence. I have chances in the final.'

Harrison was the first American teenager to reach back-to-back ATP semi-finals since Andy Roddick in 2002 and now stands 0-7 against Top 10 players.

Fish, at number nine the top American, gave away a decade to Harrison. But the veteran had to fight for victory after a runaway opening set completed in 20 minutes.

Harrison broke in the second for 5-4 and levelled the sets at one each as Fish double-faulted for a set point and then fired a forehand wide.

The final set remained tight, with Fish going up an early break for 2-1 only to lose it for 3-all. It took a tiebreaker to end the deadlock, with Fish racing away to 5-0 and finally prevailing in two hours, 12 minutes with a seventh ace on match point.

'I had a clean first set, probably the cleanest I could ever hope for. You can't go two straight sets like that,' said the winner, now 29-14 on the season as he closes in on a seventh career trophy, 'Ryan has great promise - if he were a stock I'd buy him.

'I shocked him at the start, that was the best set I've played in a long time. He fought hard in the second set and could have won the match. In the third we played close, I was lucky to get some luck in the tiebreaker.'

Fish was playing his fifth semi-final of the season and has now won tenth career match in his hometown of Los Angeles, ending with 29 winners and the same number of unforced errors.