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.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
MLB on Friday announced a formal investigation into the scandal swirling around Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter amid charges that the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar was the victim of “massive theft.” The Dodgers on Wednesday fired Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s long-time interpreter and close friend, after Ohtani’s representatives alleged that the Japanese two-way star had been the victim of theft, which was reported to involve millions of dollars and link Mizuhara to a suspected illegal bookmaker in California. “Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara from the news media,” MLB