体坛英语新闻：Serbia, Argentina complete Davis Cup last four

LONDON, July 11 (Xinhua) -- Serbia and Argentina scored respective quarterfinal victories on Sunday to join France and the Czech Republic in the Davis Cup tournament's last four.

David Nalbandian beat Mikhail Youzhny 7-6 (5), 6-4, 6-3 in the deciding match in Moscow to award Argentina a 3-2 win over Russia, which lost at home for the first time since 1996.

In Split, Novak Djokovic defeated Marin Cilic 6-3, 6-3, 6-2 in front of the home crowd to give Serbia an unassailable 3-1 lead over Croatia. Janko Tipsarevic then beat Antonio Veic 6-2, 7-6 (5) to seal Serbia's progression into its first Davis Cup semifinal, where it will host the Czech Republic in September.

The other semifinal will see Argentina travel to France, which secured a 5-0 whitewash over defending champion Spain.

Serbia took a 2-1 lead thanks to its doubles victory on Saturday and Djokovic finished Cilic in 2 hours and 24 minutes.

"Serbia is writing history by reaching the semifinals," Djokovic said, "Beating Croatia in this kind of heated atmosphere is really something big."

Argentina ended Russia's 17-tie winning streak at home since losing to the United States in the 1995 final.

Nalbandian who missed much of last season due to injury, showed no signs of rustiness as he swept aside sixth-ranked Nikolay Davydenko in straight sets in Friday's opening match and did the same to Youzhny two days later.

Earlier, Davydenko beat Eduardo Schwank 4-6, 6-3, 6-1, 6-4 to keep Russia's hopes alive but the hosts, without big-serving players Igor Andreev and Dmitry Tursunov, came up short.

"Our roster is much shorter than Argentina's," said Shamil Tarpischev, who captained Russia in his 74th Davis Cup tie, "I called up all our best players. I'm sure the other players could hardly have added strength to our performance this weekend."

Argentina has reached the final three times but is yet to win a title.

France held an insurmountable 3-0 lead over Spain coming into the reverse singles, and clinched the clean sweep thanks to Gilles Simon's 7-6 (4), 7-6 (7) victory over Nicolas Almagro and Julien Benneteau's 7-6 (3), 6-4 defeat of Feliciano Lopez.

The French, who won the Davis Cup nine times, dealt Spain its first 5-0 Davis Cup loss since 1957.

The Czechs were 3-0 ahead against Chile ahead of the reverse singles.