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.
South Korean giants T1, led by “Faker,” won their fifth League of Legends (LoL) world championship crown in London on Saturday, beating China’s Bilibili Gaming (BLG) in a thrilling final. The teams were locked at 2-2 at a packed O2 arena, but T1 clinched game five to make it back-to-back titles after nearly four hours of tense action. China’s BLG started strongly, taking the first game before T1 struck back to level. The Chinese team pulled ahead again at 2-1 only for their opponents to hit back again and go on to take the decider. Faker, who won the Most
The Major League Baseball World Series trophy is headed to Los Angeles, but the party is extending all the way to Japan. People milled around local train stations yesterday morning in Tokyo as newspaper extras were ready to roll off the presses, proclaiming Japanese stars Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto as world champions along with their Dodgers teammates after a stirring Game 5 victory over the New York Yankees. The 30-year-old is a national hero in Japan whose face adorns billboards and TV adverts all over the country. Ohtani this year became the first player in history to hit 50 home runs and
Amber Glenn overcame a fall and her own doubts to win a maiden Grand Prix figure skating title on Saturday at the Grand Prix de France. The American skater had the lead from Friday’s short program. That and the support of the crowd got her through a tough free skate in which she fell on a triple flip and put a hand onto the ice to steady herself on two other jumps. “I didn’t feel that great out there today, but I really tried, and the audience really got me through that last half when I was doubting myself,” Glenn
WORLD SERIES: ‘The individuals that were involved in that last night was a very small segment of the east Los Angeles community,’ the Los Angeles county sheriff said Rowdy crowds took to the streets of Los Angeles after the LA Dodgers won the Major League Baseball (MLB) World Series, setting a city bus on fire, breaking into stores and lighting fireworks. A dozen arrests were reported by police on Thursday, but officials said that most fans celebrated peacefully. Video showed revelers throwing objects at police in downtown LA as sirens blared and officers told them to leave the area on Wednesday night after the Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees in Game 5 of the MLB World Series at Giants Stadium in New York. Another video showed someone standing atop
RSS