Sam Querrey fights through frustrations

Sam Querrey smashed a couple of rackets, called himself “Debbie Downer,� bungled a bunch of points in the second set and generally, he said, wanted to leave his job Friday afternoon, maybe sneak out early, get away from his mistimed serves, his out-of-whack forehand, his muddled head.

Instead Querrey will have to come back to work Saturday and continue his job of defending a tennis title.

Querrey, seeded second at the Farmers Classic tournament at the Los Angeles Tennis Center, overcame all his mistakes and beat Rainer Schuettler of Germany, 6-2, 3-6, 7-6 (4), in the quarterfinals.

Querrey will face sixth-seeded, Cheesecake Factory-loving Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia at 2 p.m. Saturday. Tipsarevic upset third-seeded Marcos Baghdatis, 6-3, 7-5.

The other semifinal will have fourth-seeded Feliciano Lopez against top-seeded Andy Murray.

Murray struggled to look upbeat on the court but with not much else as he took down Alejandro Falla, 7-6 (3), 6-1, Friday night.

Lopez put a temporary halt to the summertime push of 30-year-old American James Blake with a 3-6, 7-6 (6), 6-4 quarterfinal win.

Blake is trying to relocate his aggressive game after struggling most of this season with knee tendinitis, and it was lack of aggressiveness that Blake blamed on the turnaround from the first set, when he was moving forward with his groundstrokes, and the last two sets.

Querrey, 22, who is from nearby Thousand Oaks, was a negative winner Friday. After his second-round win Wednesday over Kevin Anderson, well after 11 p.m., Querrey was hitting angry serves over and over on a practice court and Friday he said, “My serve sucks right now.�

There was some racket throwing by Querrey as well as slumped shoulders and angry talking to himself.

“I was frustrated,� he said.

And in the third set, as he kept facing break points and doing things such as shanking serves, Querrey said, “I was a mental headcase. I would go over and say, ‘What am I doing out here? I don’t want to be out here. Get me off the court, I’m not enjoying it.’ I wanted to be aggressive but also wanted to wait for the right ball. I needed to go inside out, rip some forehands, take some chances and if I made some errors, that’s OK.�

It was that go-for-broke game plan that helped Querrey finally subdue Schuettler. The 34-year-old veteran couldn’t chase down the Querrey forehand when it was hit with less thought and more power.

While Querrey was grousing about his serve, it was a big ace on the line on the ninth point of the second-set tiebreak that gave him a 6-3 lead and seemed to take away the last of Schuettler’s energy.

Murray didn’t need an extra set to win, but in between points he walked around as if every joint in his body ached and occasionally grabbed his right knee.

“It’s a bit sore,� Murray said of the knee, “but that’s just from not playing [since Wimbledon]. It’s a huge difference coming to hard courts after playing on grass. I’m a little bit sore on the joints.�

Tipsarevic, Querrey’s semifinal opponent, credits his Los Angeles hotel’s location far away from any Cheesecake Factory restaurants for his good play.

Tipsarevic, 26, loves the chain eatery. Because he can’t find one here, he said, “I’m lighter and moving better.�

Querrey might think about making a food run for his opponent before the semifinals.

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