Argentine Guillermo Canas, still rebuilding after a left wrist injury, opened his Barcelona Open campaign on Monday with a 6-1, 6-4 first-round win over unseeded Spaniard Oscar Hernandez.
Ninth seed Canas, the runner-up to Rafael Nadal last year, cruised through the first set and kept his concentration in the second to see off Hernandez, ranked 72.
Having missed the Australian Open because of injury, Canas returned to the tour in Acapulco in late February and reached the semi-finals of the ATP event in Las Vegas.
PHOTO: AFP
The 30-year-old, now ranked 31, will play either Russian Teimuraz Gabashvili or his compatriot Guillermo Coria, the former French Open runner-up who was granted a wildcard.
Croatian Mario Ancic, himself in the early stages of a comeback from illness and injury, crushed German Mischa Zverev 6-1, 6-0 to set up a second-round meeting with seventh seed Andy Murray of Britain.
Ancic, who was ranked in the top 10 in 2006, missed six months of last year because of glandular fever, but has climbed to the verge of the world’s top 50 thanks to a run of form that included a final appearance in Marseille in February, where he lost to Murray.
“I think he was struggling a little bit on the clay,” Ancic said of Zverev.
“I was happy that I played solid from the first to the last point. It’s never easy when you win the first set so easy but I played well, served well and didn’t let anything slip through my hands. I’m still looking for my game a little bit but hopefully it [the Murray match] is going to be a good battle,” he said.
Spanish 13th seed Fernando Verdasco was a first-round casualty, going down 6-3, 6-4 to Nicolas Lapentti of Ecuador.
Another Argentine, Juan Ignacio Chela, a late replacement for former French Open champion Juan Carlos Ferrero, who pulled out on the eve of the event with a groin injury, rallied past Spaniard Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 6-7 6-4 6-2.
Russian Dmitry Tursunov, seeded 15, won his first match on clay since last year’s French Open when he ousted big-serving South African Kevin Anderson 6-4, 6-3, while Dutchman Robin Haase beat Max Mirnyi of Belarus 6-2, 6-2 and now plays sixth seed Tommy Robredo.
Top seed Nadal begins his bid for a fourth successive Barcelona title today against the winner of the first-round match between Italian Potito Starace and Australian Peter Luczak.
Meanwhile, king of the clay court artists Nadal will be feeling good about his game as he headlines the Barcelona Open following an historic fourth straight Monte Carlo title taken at the expense of Roger Federer.
“I lost easy in Australia [semi-finals], Indian Wells [semi-finals] and Miami [final against Nikolay Davydenko],” said Nadal, who has won 98 of his last 99 matches on clay.
“But when you are playing well, you feel you can win a tournament. Playing a bad match in the last round leaves you with a bad feeling going into the next event,” he said.
Nadal, who beat rival Roger Federer for the third consecutive year in the Monte Carlo title match — won’t be having that problem as he awaits a second round opponent from Italian Potito Starace and Pete Luczak.
The Warsaw-born Luczak may be an Aussie, but that doesn’t preclude him from having a handy game on the dirt, having won four of his last five this month on the surface.
Nadal will be in demand on and off the court this week in the Catalan capital, with a Monday sponsor appearance already ticked off the list of his mandatory sponsor activities.
As in Monaco, the world No. 2 is aiming for more record-setting, hoping to lift his fourth straight at the Real club.
Number 15 Russian Dmitry Tursunov became the first seed to advance, defeating South African Kevin Anderson 6-4, 6-3 while Ecuador’s Nicolas Lapentti scored an upset as he beat Fernando Verdasco, 13th, with a 6-3, 6-4 scoreline.
British wildcard Andy Murray’s second-round opponent will be a rejuvenated Mario Ancic, who crushed Russian Mihail Zverev 6-1, 6-0. Ancic leads Murray 2-1 in their meetings, taking the last victory in march in the Miami second round.
“We’ve had some tough matches,” said the Croatian, who recovered last year from glandular fever which kept him out of action for six months.
Murray won in February when he faced Ancic in the Marseille final. As usual, the Barcelona field is packed with locals, with 10 Spaniards playing first-round matches.
Unknown number 237 Gabriel Trujillo-Soler booked the first Iberian victory, reaching the second round over hard-luck Austrian Werner Eschauer 6-4, 4-6, 6-2.
Eschauer has not won an ATP-level match since Jan. 1, suffering eight losses at the senior level.
Champagne corks often pop and loud, boisterous cheers are usually heard around Constitution Dock when the Sydney Hobart Yacht Race line honors winner finishes in the Tasmanian state capital. There were no such celebrations this year when the defending champions on board LawConnect won the race in the early hours of yesterday morning, as it came about 24 hours after two sailors died on separate boats in sail boom accidents two hours apart on a storm-ravaged first night of the race. LawConnect, a 100-foot super maxi skippered by Australian tech millionaire Christian Beck, sailed up the River Derwent at just after 2:30am.
‘BOWLINE’ AND ‘ARCTOS’: Roy Quaden was hit on the head by a boom, while Nick Smith was struck by the main sheet and thrown across the boat amid rough seas Two sailors have been killed in separate incidents in the treacherous Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, officials said yesterday, as a string of yachts retired in powerful winds and high seas. One of the crew members, 55-year-old Roy Quaden on Flying Fish Arctos, was hit on the head by a boom as the fleet raced down the New South Wales coast, race organizers said. The other man, 65-year-old Nick Smith, was struck by the main sheet aboard Bowline and thrown across the boat, said David Jacobs, vice commodore of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia. “Unfortunately, he hit his head on the winch, and
Liverpool on Thursday powered seven points clear at the top of the Premier League as the title favorites survived a scare in their 3-1 win against Leicester City, while Bruno Fernandes was sent off in Manchester United’s dismal 2-0 defeat against Wolverhampton Wanderers. Erling Haaland missed a penalty as crisis-torn Manchester City failed to end their dismal run with a 1-1 draw against Everton, but it was United’s travails and Liverpool’s remarkable run that took center-stage. Arne Slot’s side were shocked by Jordan Ayew’s early strike at Anfield, but the leaders recovered their composure to equalize just before the interval through Cody
HAT-TRICK PREP: World No. 1 Sabalenka clinched her first win of the season, as she aims to become the first woman in 20 years to win three Australian Opens in succession Coco Gauff, Jasmine Paolini and Taylor Fritz yesterday all clocked impressive wins as tennis powerhouses Italy and the US surged into the quarter-finals of the mixed-team United Cup. World No. 3 Gauff swept past Croatia’s Donna Vekic 6-4, 6-2 to avenge a loss at the Paris Olympics, while Fritz took care of Borna Coric 6-3, 6-2 in searing Perth heat. That was enough to put the Americans — last year’s winners — into a last-eight clash with China today, while Elena Rybakina’s Kazakhstan today are to meet defending champions Germany, led by Alexander Zverev, in the other Perth quarter-final. In Sydney, the in-form
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