By James Waterson
Ferrero’s play belied his current ranking, which is at No. 85. He won 68 percent of his service points and 44 percent of points on his return, which led to the Spaniard earning six breaks of serve.
Unlike the final two sets, the first set was hotly contested. Each player broke once and they won 65 percent of their service points.
The difference in the final two sets was that Ferrero dominated on his serve, while he forced Youzhny to fight just to hold.
Ferrero lost three points on his serve in the second set, while he broke twice. The third set wasn’t as easy for the Spaniard, as he dropped 12 points on his serve and was broken once.
Ferrero faces fellow Spaniard Marcel Granollers in the quarterfinal. Granollers defeated 126th-ranked Benoit Paire of France 6-4, 7-5 to reach his first ATP tour quarterfinal since April. Ferrero has a 2-0 record against Granollers, with both matches being contested on clay.
Cedrik-Marcel Stebe of Germany and Federico del Bonis of Argentina, both 20, continued their mini-breakthroughs by reaching their first ATP quarterfinals after they won their second-round matches.
Stebe, ranked No. 197, upset French Open quarterfinalist and World No. 39 Fabio Fognini of Italy 7-6 (5), 6-4 in what was his second win against a top 40 player in his career. The German beat World No. 29 Nikolay Davydenko in the first round.
He faces another difficult match in World No. 55 Pablo Andujar of Spain in his next match.Del Bonis, the World No. 240, dismissed 45th-ranked Sergiy Satkhovsky of Ukraine 6-4, 6-3.
He faces 287th-ranked Pavol Cervenak of Slovakia, who also reached his first ATP Tour quarterfinal after he beat Victor Hanescu 6-3, 7-6 (6).
With the loss of the seeded players, the average ranking of those left in the tournament is 131, with Granollers being the top-ranked player.