page_title: 2008 Tennis Masters Cup
section_title: Day 2
hierarchical_section_title: 2008 Tennis Masters Cup / Round robin / Day 2
caption_attribution_description: Gilles Simon against Radek Stepanek at the 2008 Tennis Masters Cup
context_page_description: The 2008 Tennis Masters Cup was a men's tennis tournament played on indoor hard courts. It was the 39th edition of the year-end singles championships, the 34th edition of the year-end doubles championships, and part of the 2008 ATP Tour. It took place at the Qizhong Forest Sports City Arena in Shanghai, China, from November 9 through November 16, 2008.
  Association of Tennis Professionals No. 3 Novak Djokovic of Serbia won his first year-end championships title in the singles event, defeating ATP No. 5 Nikolay Davydenko of Russia in the final 6–1, 7–5. Four-time winner, two-time defending champion Roger Federer was defeated in the round robin stage of the event for the first time in seven consecutive appearances. Daniel Nestor of Canada and Nenad Zimonjić of Serbia won the doubles event 7–6, 6–2 over Americans Bob and Mike Bryan in the final for their first year-end championships doubles title together. With the win, they clinched the year-end No. 1 spot for the first time together. Nestor successfully defended his 2007 Tennis Masters Cup title with his new partner Zimonjić, while the other defending champion, Mark Knowles, lost in the round robin, with Mahesh Bhupathi.
context_section_description: In the doubles event, on November 10, second-seeded Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonjić faced Erlich and Ram's replacements Mariusz Fyrstenberg and Marcin Matkowski in the first doubles match of the day. The Canadian-Serbian pair edged a close win over the Poles to improve their head-to-head against them to 3–2 (2–2 in 2008). Nestor and Zimonjić faced strong competition in the first set, snatching a 7–4 victory in the tie-break, before Fyrstenberg and Matkowski levelled the score to one-set-all winning the second set 7–5, forcing the encounter into a match tie-break, in which Nestor and Zimonjić proved stronger, eventually claiming a 7–6, 5–7, [10–4] victory, in little less than two hours. The second match of the day, a first career meeting between Jonas Björkman, in his last appearance on the tour –his seventh at the year-end event, having won in 1994 and 2006– and Kevin Ullyett, and Lukáš Dlouhý and Leander Paes, turned out an easier task for the veteran Björkman and partner Ullyett, as they lost merely ten points on their serve, and converted all their break opportunities, to win 6–3, 7–5, in just more than one hour.
  The first of the two singles matches, both from the Red Group, saw Nadal's replacement Gilles Simon take on top seed Roger Federer, to record his second straight win against the Swiss in two career meetings. Federer took the first opportunity, breaking the Frenchman to lead 3–2 and win the set 6–4. The Swiss continued his domination early in the second set, breaking to 2–1, before Simon broke back to even the score. Both players held their serve until the last game, when the Frenchman, taking advantage of Federer's repeated forehand errors, broke to a 6–4 victory. Federer's errors kept on going, as Simon tightened his game, breaking the Swiss one more time, and clinching a 4–6, 6–4, 6–3 comeback victory, repeat of his first Toronto Masters win over Federer. The loss was Federer's fourth in his seven-year, thirty-matches Masters Cup history, and marked the second time he started the tournament with a round robin loss, after his defeat by Fernando González in 2007. The second match was set to be the first complete encounter of Andy Murray and Andy Roddick since a Memphis semifinal (won by Roddick), after a Miami Masters quarterfinal (Roddick retired) and a Queen's Club quarterfinal (Murray withdrew). In Shanghai, Murray converted his first break opportunities to win the first set 6–4. Roddick struck back in the second set, dominating the game to a 5–0 lead, closing on the set 6–1. The final set followed exactly the same pattern, with Murray taking the lead this time, to claim victory on the score of 6–4, 1–6, 6–1.
caption: Gilles Simon beat Federer for the second time in two career meetings
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