Ferrer faces tough duel in 'Gladiator's' arena

Rafael Nadal has not lost to a Spanish compatriot since David Ferrer defeated him in three sets on clay in Stuttgart last year. Today they meet again to duel for a place in the final of the Rome Masters.

Yesterday Ferrer called Nadal "The Gladiator," a description hard to dispute as the 18-year-old from Majorca fought back from a set down to overwhelm the Czech Radek Stepanek, 5-7, 6-1, 6-1, in a match featuring mighty points.

It was Nadal's 15th consecutive victory in a sweep through the clay-court season that has brought him triumphs in Monte Carlo and Barcelona.

Before yesterday's match, Nadal took the opportunity to practise with that old clay-court master, Thomas Muster, of Austria, who is here for a senior tour event.

Nadal has played and won 13 matches against Spaniards since losing to Ferrer, and yesterday's events suggested that the sequence would continue, with Ferrer defeating Alberto Martin, a lucky loser from the qualifying tournament, 6-2, 3-6, 7-5. Martin would not consider himself lucky yesterday - he was unable to convert any of four match points.

There is a mouth-watering possibility that Nadal will play the 35-year-old Andre Agassi in tomorrow's final, which would be a fitting climax to an eventful week.

The sixth-seeded Agassi will play either Guillermo Coria, of Argentina, or Spain's Fernando Verdasco, in today's other semi-final. Agassi defeated Dominik Hrbaty, of Slovakia, yesterday, 6-3, 6-3. There were plenty of service breaks, but Agassi used the wind to advantage, keeping the ball in play and luring Hrbaty into making errors.

After the match, Hrbaty removed his cap before shaking hands with the maestro. This touch of chivalry followed Andy Roddick's conceding a match point against Verdasco the day before.

Roddick was also a loser - but he had three more match points ahead of him before Verdasco took control of the contest. Agassi, who saw Roddick's gesture on television, said the picture was not clear enough for him to tell if both players were walking to the net to shake hands, or Verdasco was going to check the mark, or the umpire was going to come down.

Agassi, the only man in history to win Grand Slam singles titles on grass, clay and concrete, was asked if he had ever given a match point to an opponent.

"No, not on match point - either way," he said. "But it's nice on clay, when you can look and see where it is. I can see the mark and not tell if it's in or out, so I leave it to someone else to decide and live with it.

"I don't trust myself . I'm playing on dirt, it's not normal for me to see if there's space. Sometimes they say there's space, sometimes they say there's no space, that it's part of the line, that's why it looks like there's space. I stopped arguing a long time ago with that.

"Outside clay courts it's normal for players to allow bad calls to happen if they happen. You hope it evens out at the end of a match - or at the very least at the end of a career."

On a general point of sportsmanship in tennis, Agassi was asked if players were dishonest when he was competing in the juniors in America. "Jeff Tarango - oh, did I say that?" he smiled. "Was I just thinking that, or did that come out?

"Yeah, it happens more in juniors. I think also there's so many cases in juniors where a child has additional pressure put on him by parents. And, you know, you're a kid, and you live with the environment and you survive.

"I've seen a lot of kids who wanted to be more honest than their parents," he said.