World No. 1s Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek both turned around losing situations on Saturday to move into the semi-finals of the Cincinnati Open.
Sinner prevented rival Andrey Rublev from repeating a triumph from the previous week in Montreal as he defeated the sixth seed in a 4-6, 7-5, 6-4 fightback.
Swiatek did the same in the women’s draw as she worked to overcome teen Mirra Andreeva 4-6, 6-3, 7-5.
Photo: Susan Mullane-USA TODAY
Sinner would square off in the semis against third-ranked 2021 champion Alexander Zverev, who got past rain interruptions in the final set to defeat Ben Shelton.
Top seed Sinner took to the court for only his second match of the week after a first-round bye and a walkover on Friday.
Sinner — whose fitness has been compromised in the past few months by a hip niggle, illness and the tonsillitis that forced him to miss the Olympics — stormed back to win the second set and break Rublev to start the third.
He clinched victory in a set where five of the 10 games were breaks of serve.His match point ball was caught by a gust of wind and put out of the reach of his opponent.
“There was a lot of mental strength required today,” Sinner said.
Poland’s Swiatek grabbed a break in the penultimate game of a match lasting more than two-and-a-half hours to finally advance past Andreeva at the US Open tune-up, which concludes today.
Swiatek moved through on her first match point, her opponent driving a return long, and won a 30th match this season at the WTA 1000 level. She stands 53-6 for the season and has won 25 matches on hardcourt.
Swiatek would bid for the finals against Aryna Sabalenka, a 6-3, 6-2 winner over Liudmila Samsonova.
On the other side of Ohio, top seeds Latish Chan of Taiwan and Japanese partner Miyu Kato were yesterday to start their women’s doubles campaign at Tennis in the Land in Cleveland against American sisters Carmen and Ivana Corley.
Taiwan’s Wu Fang-hsien and Russian partner Yana Sizikova were to play second seeds Cristina Bucsa of Spain and Yifan Xu of China.
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
A debate over the soul of soccer is raging in FIFA World Cup holders Argentina, pitting defenders of the social role of the beautiful game against the government of libertarian Argentine President Javier Milei, who wants to turn clubs into for-profit companies. Argentina, which gave the world Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi, is home to some of the world’s most devoted soccer fans — a fact attributed by supporters like Gabriel Nicosia to the clubs’ community outreach. Nicosia is a lifelong supporter of San Lorenzo, a more than 100-year-old first division club based in the working-class Buenos Aires neighborhood of Boedo where
RSS