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Federer, who was broken three straight times in the first set, came within two points of winning while leading 5-4 in the third set. But Davydenko held on and then broke Federer to take a 6-5 lead before serving out the win.

Federer again struggled with his serve and his shot-making for much of the match, but he looked invincible throughout the third set, losing only three points on serve to hold easily through 5-4. And with Davydenko serving to stay in the match, Federer took a 30-0 lead when he returned an overhead smash from Davydenko by running across the court and jumping high to get his racket on the ball.

Davydenko was stunned by the acrobatic return, but he still won the next four points to hold serve.

Federer, who clinched the year-end No. 1 ranking after winning his second group match, again didn’t look like himself at the O2 Arena, often misplacing his usual dominating forehand and sometimes struggling to hold serve against a player he had never before lost to.

Even the fans may have questioned who it was on the court when the scoreboard operator mistakenly put a red-white-and-blue-striped Russian flag next to Federer’s name for a portion of the match. It was, however, quickly replaced by the familiar Swiss symbol of a white cross in a red background.

On Saturday, Federer was stellar in the opening two games, first holding at love with a pair of aces and then earning a pair of break points in the second game. But Davydenko saved them both, and he then went on his streak of breaking Federer three straight times. The 15-time Grand Slam champion broke back once.

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Davydenko, Djokovic and Soderling all finished with two wins in the round-robin phase, but the third-ranked Serb was eliminated on sets. Soderling had already secured advancement and finished at the top of Group B.

Djokovic beat Rafael Nadal 7-6 (5), 6-3 earlier Friday, handing the Spaniard his third straight loss at the tournament.

Davydenko will face Roger Federer in Saturday’s semifinal match. Soderling, who entered the tournament as an alternate after Andy Roddick pulled out because of injury, will take on U.S. Open champion Juan Martin del Potro later in the day in a matchup of big hitters.

Davydenko, who reached the final of the lucrative season-ending tournament last year, broke Soderling for the first time to take a 4-2 lead in the decider and converted his second match point when the Swede missed an easy forehand at the net with a wide-open court.

The Russian, who double-faulted on the first match point, reacted with a stunned look of disbelief before letting out a celebratory yell.

In a match that featured plenty of big serves but few memorable rallies, Soderling was up a mini-break at 4-3 in the first-set tiebreaker but lost four points in a row. The Russian converted his first set point with an overhead smash.

Soderling, who reached his first Grand Slam final this year at the French Open, slipped when running to the net while serving at 4-3 in the second set and fell hard to the ground. He got up seemingly unscathed and later got the first break of the match to go up 5-4 before serving out the set.

Davydenko has struggled with a sore left leg this week and said he did not practice on Thursday, opting to get treatment on the tight muscle instead. Now he has little time to recover ahead of Saturday’s early semifinal match against Federer.

Nadal struggled for the third match in a row and finished with nearly three times as many unforced errors as winners—35 to 12. He needed medical treatment on his lower back at 2-1 in the second set, then was broken in the next game.

Nadal had broken back twice in the first set to reach the tiebreaker, where he shanked a couple of forehands and quickly fell behind 6-2. He saved three set points before sending a forehand wide.

Nadal leaves the tournament without having won a single set, and is now on a four-match losing streak after falling to Djokovic in the semifinals of the Paris Masters this month. It’s his worst streak since finishing 2003 with consecutive first-round losses in Basel, Madrid and Lyon and then starting 2004 with a loss to Thierry Ascione in Chennai, India.

Djokovic entered the tournament on a 10-match winning streak after taking back-to-back titles in Basel and Paris, but said his recent successes have taken a toll.

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Agassi revealed in his recent autobiography that he failed a 1997 drug test, a result he says was thrown out after he lied by claiming he “unwittingly” took crystal meth.

However, ATP chairman Adam Helfant said on Friday that there was no way to sanction the American retroactively since he has retired from tennis.

“There has been a lot of speculation about whether the ATP would reopen the case, but we cannot do that because he’s no longer playing on the tour,” Helfant said at the ATP World Tour Finals in London. “I asked an outside law firm to go through the records from 1997 so I had all the facts. Andre Agassi has admitted he failed a drugs test in 1997 and regrettably he then lied about it. Even more regrettably he got away with it.”

He said the ATP’s decision not to reveal the positive test was in line with its policy not to comment on doping cases.

Helfant said he had a “very frank conversation” with Agassi after the book came out, and that the ATP has responded to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s questions about the case.

“But what was said will remain between us and will not be made public,” he said.

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Victory at the European Commission in Brussels and the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights could force WADA to change its rules on when and where athletes can be tested out of competition.

The athletes are already appealing their one-year bans before the Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The 20-year-old Wickmayer, a U.S. Open semifinalist, was banned for failing three times to correctly report where she could be found for testing. The 16th-ranked player said she never missed a test or tested positive.

Malisse, a Wimbledon semifinalist in 2002, missed one test and twice failed to report his whereabouts. The 29-year-old says the one-year suspension could end his career.

The controversial “whereabouts” rule is a cornerstone of WADA policy. It requires elite athletes to make themselves available for out-of-competition testing for one hour a day, 365 days a year.

Under the rules, athletes must give three months’ notice of where and when they can be located for testing. The information is registered online and can be updated by e-mail or text message.

If an athlete misses three out-of-competition tests or fails three times to register where he will be for anti-doping tests, sanctions can be imposed.

Many athletes contend the system violates their right to privacy, while WADA says the fight against doping benefits all athletes and supersedes that right.

WADA says it is necessary to test athletes out of competition because many banned substances are undetectable by the time a competition starts. The agency instituted the “whereabouts” rule to catch athletes who were doping between competitions.

Wickmayer has said she was never properly informed how the system works and is now being punished like a doping cheat without ever having tested positive.

“They are taking my work of 10 years away. Just like that. Just because I didn’t fill in (my whereabouts),” she said on Thursday. After the one-year suspension, Wickmayer will have lost her ranking and will be forced to start over.

Wickmayer was suspended last week by a Belgian anti-doping tribunal, which based its decision on the WADA rules.

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As he retraces that life in present tense—and without quotation marks, because “this is reconstructed dialogue,” as he put it—Agassi sets out to explain himself and describe his journey from ninth-grade dropout to founder of a prep school in Las Vegas. He writes about his courtship of tennis star Steffi Graf, his wife and the mother of their two children.

Along the way, he offers critical words for rivals such as Pete Sampras, Michael Chang and Boris Becker; discusses “tanking” matches; and poignantly describes his childhood fear of his father who refused to read the book.

Agassi recounts how, his father would give him Excedrin before matches because it contained caffeine. Once, Agassi writes, his father gave him what Agassi believes to be speed. He also writes at various points about using marijuana and alcohol. Speaking to the AP, Agassi called crystal meth “a performance inhibitor” and said, “Everything I earned on the tennis court, I actually had to probably earn more than I needed to, because of many of the things I did to myself.”

Asked whether he ever took performance-enhancing substances as a professional, Agassi—who retired in 2006—replied, “No. No. The answer is ‘No.”’

He is not surprised by the negative reactions to some of the book’s revelations. Martina Navratilova, for example, likened Agassi to baseball’s Roger Clemens; Roger Federer referred to material in the book as “a bit of a pity.”

He said he simply felt compelled to confess to using crystal meth “a lot” in 1997, failing a doping test that year, lying to the men’s tennis tour about how the drug entered his system and avoiding punishment.

“How can you tell people to not hide from truth when you hide from it?” Agassi said “While I know this story cuts against the grain of one’s perceptions of me, it is the true me. And I believe in that authenticity.”

There are plenty of fascinating passages, aside from the excerpts sold to magazines and newspapers as part of the publicity push to help sell books. Agassi used the word “sensationalized” repeatedly during the 20-minute interview to describe those excerpts.

He hopes people will read the entire book so they can appreciate what he called its “power.”

“It’s about me learning how to commit fully, despite the fear of failure,” he said. “It’s a person waking up in a life that they didn’t choose, in a life that they maybe don’t want, and not being sure how to take ownership of their own life, and figuring that out.”

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According to an excerpt of the autobiography, the eight-time Grand Slam champion writes that he sent a letter to the ATP tour to explain the positive test, saying he accidentally drank from a soda spiked with meth by his assistant “Slim.”

“I feel ashamed, of course. I promise myself that this lie is the end of it. The ATP reviewed the case—and threw it out.”

The ATP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Agassi retired in 2006. Excerpts from his autobiography, which comes out Nov. 9, are being published this week in the London newspaper, as well as Sports Illustrated and People magazines.

In a story posted on People magazine’s Web site Tuesday, Agassi says: “I can’t speak to addiction, but a lot of people would say that if you’re using anything as an escape, you have a problem.”

According to the Times of London Web site, Agassi writes in his book that “Slim” was the person who introduced him to crystal meth, dumping a small pile of powder on the coffee table.

“I snort some. I ease back on the couch and consider the Rubicon I’ve just crossed,” Agassi writes.

“There is a moment of regret, followed by vast sadness. Then comes a tidal wave of euphoria that sweeps away every negative thought in my head. I’ve never felt so alive, so hopeful—and I’ve never felt such energy.”

“I’m seized by a desperate desire to clean. I go tearing around my house, cleaning it from top to bottom. I dust the furniture. I scour the tub. I make the beds.”

Among the most successful—and, without a doubt, one of the most popular— tennis players in history, Agassi drew attention not just for his play, but also for his outfits, his hairstyles and his relationships with women, including a failed marriage to actress Brooke Shields.

Agassi’s first major championship came at Wimbledon in 1992, and he won a gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. But by late 1997, he dropped to No. 141 in the rankings, and he was playing in tennis’ equivalent of the minor leagues.

He resuscitated his career in 1998, making the biggest one-year jump into the top 10 in the history of the ATP rankings. The next season, he won the French Open to complete a career Grand Slam, then added a second career U.S. Open title en route to finishing 1999 at No. 1.

In a posting on People’s Web site, Agassi says he “was worried for a moment, but not for long,” about how fans would react if they found out he used drugs.

“I wore my heart on my sleeve and my emotions were always written on my face. I was actually excited about telling the world the whole story,” Agassi says.

A writer from SI first revealed the crystal meth reference on a Twitter posting Tuesday.

According to the Times of London excerpt, Agassi was walking through New York’s LaGuardia airport when he got the call that he had failed a drug test.

“There is doom in his voice, as if he’s going to tell me I’m dying,” Agassi writes. “And that’s exactly what he tells me.”

“He reminds me that tennis has three classes of drug violation,” Agassi writes. “Performance-enhancing drugs … would constitute a Class 1, he says, which would carry a suspension of two years. However, he adds, crystal meth would seem to be a clear case of Class 2. Recreational drugs.” That would mean a three-month suspension.

“My name, my career, everything is now on the line. Whatever I’ve achieved, whatever I’ve worked for, might soon mean nothing. Days later I sit in a hard-backed chair, a legal pad in my lap, and write a letter to the ATP. It’s filled with lies interwoven with bits of truth.”

In 2007, Martina Hingis tested positive for cocaine after a third-round exit at Wimbledon. She denied using the drug but was banned for two years. In July, Frenchman Richard Gasquet was cleared to resume playing after a 2 1/2 -month ban upon persuading the International Tennis Federation’s tribunal panel that he inadvertently took cocaine by kissing a woman in a nightclub.

How much longer will the ATP be in denial about players drug use? Zero tolerance should be the policy no matter what your last name is.

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The WTA Tour is investigating a surge in online bets backing her opponent that occurred after her father was overheard telling Wozniacki to quit because she wouldn’t be able to play in the next round of the Luxembourg Open.

The 19-year-old Dane retired with a hamstring injury while leading Anne Kremer of Luxembourg 7-5, 5-0.

Wozniacki acknowledged that her father told her to quit—but only because she was in too much pain to continue.

Wozniacki said she initially felt the injury while serving at 5-5 in the first set, and received medical treatment on her left leg later in that game. She tried to continue playing, but “the pain just got worse.”

Her father came onto the court at 3-0 in the second, and was picked up by microphones advising her to retire.

Wozniacki said she went to the hospital the next day, and a scan showed she had strained a muscle. She was taped around her left thigh when training Monday but hopes to play in the lucrative eight-player tournament, which begins Tuesday with a round-robin stage.

Tour officials said last week they were looking into the match, and would pass along the information to the Tennis Integrity Unit, which was created by the sport’s governing bodies to combat gambling and match-fixing. The unit does not comment on ongoing investigations.

Wozniacki said she has discussed her reasons for quitting with tour representatives and does not expect any punishment.

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The second-seeded Serb broke Cilic’s serve in the sixth game and again in the eighth to take the first set.

The second set was much tighter, with each breaking the other’s serve three times to force the tiebreak. But Cilic then struggled, and his return at 6-4 went wide, handing Djokovic the win.

The sixth-seeded Kuznetsova needed just 1 hour, 20 minutes to complete her victory.

The third-ranked Djokovic’s path to the title was eased by Cilic’s upset of top-seeded Rafael Nadal in Saturday’s semifinal. The rain delay also appeared to have been a factor, allowing Djokovic time to regroup.

Kuznetsova has already qualified for the season-ending WTA Tour Championship in Doha at the end of the month, and will spend some time in Moscow practicing before arriving in the Persian Gulf a to acclimatize to the conditions.

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Top-seeded Nikolay Davydenko also reached the quarterfinals by beating American Taylor Dent 6-3, 7-6, while fellow Russian Mikhail Youzhny ousted wild-card entry Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus 6-2, 6-3.

In first-round action, fifth-seeded Gael Monfils of France defeated Denis Istomin of Uzbekistan 7-6 (3), 7-6 (2). Monfils said he felt tired after arriving in Kuala Lumpur early Wednesday.

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