Two-time defending champion Fabrice Santoro continued his dominance at the Hall of Fame Championships on Friday, winning two matches to advance to the semi-finals.
Santoro, 36, the oldest singles player on the ATP Tour, raised his record to 12-0 on Newport’s grass courts. He has lost just one set at the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
Santoro will face third-seeded Sam Querrey, a 6-3, 6-4 winner over seventh-seeded fellow American Kevin Kim.
PHOTO: AP
After rallying to beat American Taylor Dent 7-6 (7/5), 6-4 in a contrast of styles earlier, Santoro frustrated countryman and doubles partner Nicolas Mahut 6-4, 6-4 with an array of two-handed cuts, slices and drops.
Santoro took control by breaking Mahut in the third game of the first set. He broke in the ninth game of the second, going up 5-4, before closing it out.
Playing in sparkling sunshine with bright blue skies that made up for two days of heavy rain, there were eight second-round matches followed by the four quarter-finals.
PHOTO: EPA
The other semi-finalists were lucky loser Rajeev Ram, who beat fellow American Jessie Levine 5-7, 6-2, 7-6 (7/3) and qualifier Olivier Rochus of Belgium, who beat Brendan Evans of the US 6-4, 6-4.
Earlier in the day, Querrey beat wild card Prakash Amritraj of India, Levine ousted sixth-seeded Philipp Petzschiner of Germany, Ram eliminated Samuel Groth of Austria, Kim got past Germany’s Daniel Brands, Evans beat Robby Ginepri, Rochus downed Sergiy Stakhovsky of the Ukraine and Mahut beat American Alex Bogomolov Jr.
■SWEDISH OPEN
AP, BASTAD, SWEDEN
Top-seeded Caroline Wozniacki beat Flavia Pennetta 6-3, 4-6, 6-2 on Friday to reach the Swedish Open final for the first time.
Wozniacki will play unseeded Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez in the final. Martinez Sanchez defeated Gisela Dulko 7-5, 6-4 in the other semi-final.
Ninth-ranked Wozniacki broke Pennetta’s serve twice in the third set, wrapping up the match on her second match point when the Italian player netted a backhand return.
Pennetta, seeded third in the clay-court tournament, forced a decisive set when she broke Wozniacki’s serve in the 10th game of the second set, hitting a superb volley that the Dane could not return.
It was the first time in four matches that Wozniacki dropped a set in the tournament.
Wozniacki, who turned 19 yesterday, has won five WTA titles, including two this year — at Ponte Vedra and Eastbourne. She reached the fourth round at Wimbledon.
The final will be the first meeting between Martinez Sanchez and Wozniacki.
“My game is difficult for my opponents, it’s not easy to read me,” Martinez Sanchez said after coming back from a 4-2 deficit in the second set to beat Dulko.
■BUDAPEST GRAND PRIX
AP, BUDAPEST
Fourth-seeded Agnes Szavay of Hungary defeated qualifier Timea Bacsinszky of Switzerland 6-2, 6-3 on Friday to reach the semi-finals of the Budapest Grand Prix.
Szavay won the last four games of the first set after breaking Bacsinszky for a 3-2 lead and continued to control the play in the second.
Szavay will next face sixth-seeded Alona Bondarenko of Ukraine, who trailed 5-1 against Shahar Peer of Israel before winning 10 games in a row for a 7-5, 6-1 win.
Edina Gallovits of Romania also advanced by beating Petra Martic of Croatia, 6-3, 7-6 (7/6), while the last quarter-final between top-seeded Patty Schnyder of Switzerland and fifth-seeded Alisa Kleybanova of Russia was suspended because of rain with Schnyder leading 4-3 in the first set.
RECORD DEFEAT: The Shanghai-based ‘Oriental Sports Daily’ said the drubbing was so disastrous, and taste so bitter, that all that is left is ‘numbness’ Chinese soccer fans and media rounded on the national team yesterday after they experienced fresh humiliation in a 7-0 thrashing to rivals Japan in their opening Group C match in the third phase of Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. The humiliation in Saitama on Thursday against Asia’s top-ranked team was China’s worst defeat in World Cup qualifying and only a goal short of their record 8-0 loss to Brazil in 2012. Chinese President Xi Jinping once said he wanted China to host and even win the World Cup one day, but that ambition looked further away than ever after a
‘KHELIFMANIA’: In the weeks since the Algerian boxer won gold in Paris, national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women In the weeks since Algeria’s Imane Khelif won an Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing, athletes and coaches in the North African nation say national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women. Khelif’s image is practically everywhere, featured in advertisements at airports, on highway billboards and in boxing gyms. The 25-year-old welterweight’s success in Paris has vaulted her to national hero status, especially after Algerians rallied behind her in the face of uninformed speculation about her gender and eligibility to compete. Amateur boxer Zougar Amina, a medical student who has been practicing for a year, called Khelif an
Crowds descended on the home of 17-year-old Chinese diver Quan Hongchan after she won two golds at the Paris Olympics while gymnast Zhang Boheng hid in a Beijing airport toilet to escape overzealous throngs of fans. They are just two recent examples of what state media are calling “toxic fandom” and Chinese authorities have vowed to crack down on it. Some of the adulation toward China’s sports stars has been more sinister — fans obsessing over athletes’ personal lives, cyberbullying opponents or slamming supposedly crooked judges. Experts say it mirrors the kind of behavior once reserved for entertainment celebrities before
GOING GLOBAL: The regular season fixture is part of the football league’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the sport to international destinations The US National Football League (NFL) breaks new ground in its global expansion strategy tomorrow when the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers face off in the first-ever grid-iron game staged in Brazil. For one night only, the land of Pele and ‘The Beautiful Game’ will get a rare glimpse into the bone-crunching world of American football as the Packers and Eagles collide at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena, the 46,000-seat home of soccer club Corinthians. The regular season fixture is part of the NFL’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the US’ most popular sport to new territories following previous international fixtures