Berdych booed after controversial win over

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Czech seventh seed Tomas Berdych was booed off Hisense Arena on Sunday after a bad tempered fourth-round victory over Nicolas Almagro at the Australian Open.

Berdych refused to shake hands with the Spaniard after he won the match 4-6 7-6 7-6 7-6 and set up a quarter-final with Rafa Nadal because he felt the 10th-seeded Almagro had deliberately blasted a return at his head during the fourth set.

"The court is pretty big and you always have some space to put the ball in," Berdych complained. "And not even if you are standing three or four meters from the guy (does he need) to hit it straight to your face."

The ball rebounded off Berdych's arm and over the net which Almagro put away for the point, and while the Spaniard apologized immediately, the Czech was still incensed at the conclusion of the three-hour 54-minute match.

"This is not the way how tennis is," he added. "Even if you have this point, you always have enough space where to put the ball and not actually try to hit the other guy."

Berdych's courtside interview was drowned out by the crowd booing and hissing, while tennis coach Brad Gilbert said he was appalled at the Czech's decision.

"Really poor of the Birdman not to shake hands with Nico," Gilbert wrote on his Twitter page. "He was way wrong... I am stunned with Tomas."

Little had separated the pair as they hammered away for a place in the quarter-finals with the only difference in the tiebreaks when Berdych won the crucial points.

Despite not accepting Almagro's apology on court, Berdych tried to play down the row afterwards, saying it was "already in the past."

"I think maybe we both made a mistake," he said. "So it's even, and that's it. I don't think there's any big story. Just something happened there, and that's it.

"We don't have any problems at all. That's how it is. It was a pretty tight match, and I think there was more to this game than just this story."

Almagro recalled that Berdych had clashed with Nadal at the Madrid Masters in 2006, when the Spaniard called him "stupid" after he tried to silence the partisan crowd.

"This is something that is five or six years old," he said. There is nothing to say about it. We are friends, all of us. I mean, there is nothing between me, Rafa, Nico, anybody."

When Berdych won that quarter-final in Madrid, it was his third successive victory over Nadal. He has lost the nine encounters since and knows it will be difficult to end that sequence.

"I have seen some of Rafa playing and he's looking really strong," he said. "He didn't drop a set yet and he's playing really confidently.

"He's shown he's a great tennis player. He deserves to be in the position that he is, maybe even higher. So for me it's going to be extremely tough."

(Additional writing by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Ian Ransom)