Naomi Osaka’s hopes of clinching the Qatar Open ended on Thursday in a straight-sets quarter-final loss to fellow former world No. 1 Karolina Pliskova.
Four-time Grand Slam winner Osaka, who is rebuilding her career after maternity leave, went down 7-6 (8/6), 7-6 (7/5) after saving three match points.
It was the 26-year-old Japanese star’s second defeat to Pliskova this year after losing in three sets in her comeback tournament in Brisbane last month.
Photo: AP
Pliskova, ranked at 59, was to face world No. 1 Iga Swiatek for a place in today’s final.
The Czech’s win over Osaka, clinched in 1 hour, 43 minutes, was her ninth in the past 10 days, a run which included the Transylvania Open title on Sunday.
Defending champion Swiatek moved closer to a third successive Qatar title when she brushed aside Victoria Azarenka 6-4, 6-0 in 74 minutes in her quarter-final.
Polish 22-year-old Swiatek is 12-1 at the Gulf tournament, with her only defeat coming in the 2020 second round to Svetlana Kuznetsova.
“I felt like I started a little bit playing too aggressively maybe, but then I found my rhythm and the proper way to play,” Swiatek said. “I kept it till the end of the match. I’m happy that I could analyze during the match and then take a lesson from that.”
Former world No. 1 Azarenka, the 2012 and 2013 champion in Doha, double-faulted in the ninth game to hand Swiatek the first break.
The top seed served it out before racing through the second set without facing a break point.
Swiatek ended the encounter with 17 winners to just five from Azarenka.
Earlier, Elena Rybakina and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova set up a semi-final clash.
Third seed and former Wimbledon champion Rybakina came from 4-2 down in the first set to defeat 2021 US Open finalist Leylah Fernandez 6-4, 6-2.
Pavlyuchenkova secured her first WTA 1000-level hard-court semi-final in 14 years with a 7-5, 6-4 win over Danielle Collins of the US.
“I hope it will be a good match, we know each other well, both on and off the court,” said Rybakina, last weekend’s champion in Abu Dhabi, of her clash with Pavlyuchenkova.
Pavlyuchenkova, ranked 32 in the world, needed 1 hour, 34 minutes to see off Collins, a former world no. 7 who had to qualify.
The Russian’s only stutter came in the first set when she coughed up a 5-2 lead, but she regrouped to take it 7-5 and went on to claim victory with her first match point.
“I was injured for a long time, so I’m happy to be back and able to fight on all points, and victories give me confidence,” Pavlyuchenkova said in the post-match on-court interview.
“I’ve been working a lot on the mental aspect and I feel like it’s paying off,” added the 32-year-old, a finalist at the French Open in 2021.
In the quarter-finals of the women’s doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Elise Mertens of Belgium, the top seeds, fell to a shock 6-1, 6-3 defeat to fifth seeds Demi Schuurs of the Netherlands and Luisa Stefani of Brazil.
ROTTERDAM OPEN
AFP, ROTTERDAM, Netherlands
Australian Open champion Jannik Sinner on Thursday overcame a stubborn fightback by veteran Frenchman Gael Monfils to battle into the Rotterdam Open quarter-finals with a 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 win, as other top seeds crashed out on a day of upsets.
The 22-year-old Italian, unbeaten this year, showed the imperious form that took him to victory in Melbourne from the start, racing to a 3-0 first-set lead.
Wild-card Monfils, 37, entertained the crowd with some trademark retrieving and the occasional trick shot, but initially had no answer to Sinner’s consistency, losing the first set 6-3.
However, the Frenchman, now 70th in the world, rolled back the years in the second set, delighting the Rotterdam crowd that saw him win back-to-back titles in 2019 and 2020.
Cleverly mixing blistering forehands and well-judged drop shots, he disturbed Sinner’s rhythm and broke serve early in the second set, hanging on to close it out 6-3.
A poor Monfils first-service game in the deciding set, riddled with unforced errors and a double fault, handed the initiative back to the Italian, who again opened up a 3-0 advantage.
Sinner’s relentless pressure told and the world No. 4 eventually broke the French resistance, finishing off the third set 6-3.
“It’s always tough to play against him. He won two times here, so he knows how to play here,” Sinner said. “I’m very happy. I was struggling a bit, I didn’t have so much rhythm, but in these kind of matches you learn a lot. It gives me confidence for the next one,” against Canada’s Milos Raonic.
Earlier in the day, rising star Holger Rune suffered a shock defeat to Kazakhstan’s Alexander Shevchenko and local hero Tallon Griekspoor beat fourth seed Hubert Hurkacz in a thriller with the help of raucous crowd support.
Both winners said the victories were their “biggest” or “best.”
Shevchenko, the 23-year-old world No. 57, won 6-4, 1-6, 6-3 for only his second career victory against a top-10 player to set up a quarter-final clash against Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov.
“It’s the biggest win of my career. I’m really proud of myself,” Shevchenko said.
Griekspoor, the world No. 29, showed his battling qualities, coming through 7-6 (7/5), 6-7 (5/7), 7-6 (7/4).
“I’m unbelievably happy. It’s the best win of my life,” Griekspoor said.
Additional reporting by staff writer
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
RSS