The ATP 500 tournament in Dubai offered four-time champion Novak Djokovic a chance to thrust his Australian Open disappointment behind him.  Falling to eventual champion Stanislas Wawrinka in an epic quarterfinal there, the world No. 2 could not defend the title at his favorite major.  But Djokovic has seized this chance to turn the page with both hands so far, brushing aside two quality opponents to reach the quarterfinals in the Persian Gulf.

A comfortable winner over world No. 54 Denis Istomin in the first round, Djokovic needed just 58 minutes to dispatch a rising 25-year-old from Spain on Wednesday.  Roberto Bautista Agut had reached the second week of the Australian Open, upsetting an elite opponent there in Juan Martin del Potro.  The two men had met last year in Dubai as well, when Bautista Agut recovered from a dismal first set to force a second-set tiebreak.

In their second straight Dubai clash, Djokovic dominated from start to finish.  A 72% first-serve percentage allowed him to control most of his service games, while he won more than half of the points on Bautista Agut's serve and well over half on his first serve.  At just six feet tall, the Spaniard lacks the imposing delivery needed to thrust the Serb onto the defensive from the outset.  And starting most points on one's serve in neutral rallying mode is not a recipe for success against Djokovic's balanced, steady baseline game.

One win away from a likely semifinal against Djokovic, five-time Dubai champion Roger Federer needed to work much harder in the second round than he had in the first.  Early in his match with the 35-year-old Radek Stepanek, Federer's crisp groundstrokes and Stepanek's misfiring serve suggested that a rout lay ahead.  But a second-set lull by the Swiss superstar gave the canny Czech a chance to catch his breath.  Stepanek took full advantage by sweeping through a second-set tiebreak to level the match and then claiming an early lead in the final set.

Featuring six service breaks in nine games, that final set mirrored Stepanek's chaotic approach rather than Federer's clean, methodical methods.  The five-time Dubai champion still managed to pull through, however, by breaking Stepanek in four of five service games.  Federer said afterward that he struggled to find the right balance between defense and offense until late in the match, when he feared that it might be too late.  He thus was understandably relieved to survive it and set up a quarterfinal with giant-killer Lukas Rosol.  Sixth seed Mikhail Youzhny, Djokovic's quarterfinal opponent, and Rosol are the only remaining obstacles barring a blockbuster Federer-Djokovic semifinal on Friday.

The other key figures in Dubai advanced more routinely on Wednesday.  World No. 10 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga received a walkover from Nikolay Davydenko, while the seventh-ranked Tomas Berdych crushed Sergiy Stakhovsky.  In an entertaining development for local fans, Tunisian wildcard Malek Jaziri reached the quarterfinals by defeating fellow wildcard Somdev Devvarman.  Jaziri's surprise run this week owes much to the retirement of world No. 5 Juan Martin del Potro against Devvarman in the previous round.