By Chris Soderstrom
Top seed and defending champion Andy Murray continues to soar, reaching a 10 th quarter-final of the season at the St Petersburg Open yesterday.
The Scot had few troubles dispatching of Latvia’s Ernests Gulbis 6-4, 6-2 and improved his head-to-head record to 2-0 over the 20-year-old.
He will now play Serbia’s Janko Tipsarevic, a 6-4 7-6(3) winner over Frenchman Jeremy Chardy, in the last eight.
Marat Safin, a two-time champion in St Petersburg, suffered a shock loss to Kazakhstan qualifier Andrey Golubev to the dismay of a packed home crowd.
Golubev defeated his childhood idol 6-4, 6-2 and reaches his first quarter-final.
“Marat was always my hero since I was a teenager,” said the 21-year-old. “It was my dream to play him. I wasn’t even dreaming of beating him especially at his home court.”