'Baby Fed' Fails to Reach Clash with Federer

Bulgarian youngster Grigor Dimitrov, often nicknamed "Baby Fed" by tennis observers, lost dramatically against Paul-Henri Mathieu, thus failing to reach his first clash with his idol, Roger Federer.

Matheiu held off Dimitrov 7-6(2), 7-6(4) in the quarterfinals of the Swiss Indoors tournament in Basel late on Friday in a game that took two hours to complete.

Dimitrov got off to a fast start by breaking serve in the sixth game, but he failed to close things out with the set on his racket at 5-3. Mathieu eventually had all the momentum going into the first-set tiebreaker, having recovered from a 5-2 deficit before fighting off two set points at 5-6. It showed in the 'breaker, with the Frenchman earning an immediate mini-break for 1-0 and ultimately dominating it seven points to two.

In the second, it was Mathieu's turn to squander away a lead.Dimitrov managed to play his way into another tiebreaker only to once again buckle under the pressure. Mathieu earned consecutive mini-breaks at 5-4 and 6-4 to wrap up the proceedings, tennistalk.com informs.

Mathieu will face Roger Federer in the semifinal.