Dinara Safina of Russia downed Tamarine Tanasugarn of Thailand 6-1, 6-3 on Monday and set up a second-round match with world No. 1 Justine Henin-Hardenne at the Bausch & Lomb Championships.
Safina, who has beaten three top-20 players this year, is the youngest player at 17 in a high-class field, featuring seven of the world's top 10 women.
PHOTO: EPA
The tournament's 25th anniversary has also drawn Serena Williams and previous champions Amelie Mauresmo, Lindsay Davenport, 2003 winner Elena Dementieva and Martina Navratilova, who is playing singles for the first time in almost two years.
PHOTO: EPA
Henin-Hardenne returns from a two-week break to begin her clay court season, and extend her 22-1 record this year, which includes four titles and the Australian Open.
Williams, who won the Nasdaq-100 Open on Sunday beating Dementieva in the final, will make her first appearance at Amelia Island since 2000. As the No. 2 seed, she'll face a harder road than in Key Biscayne last week, when the top five ranked players were missing. After a first-round bye, Williams plays either 1998 champion Mary Pierce or Meghann Shaughnessy of the United States.
Navratilova said she decided to accept a wild card to play singles in a United States WTA event for the first time since 1994 to help her doubles game. The last time she played singles on tour was at Eastbourne in June 2002.
She has a 25-3 record at Amelia Island, including the inaugural title in 1980, plus 1984 and 1988. Navratilova, 47, meets Kristina Brandi of Puerto Rico in the first round.
No. 14 Francesca Schiavone of Italy was the first beaten seed on Monday when she failed to serve out the match at 6-1, 5-3, and was overcome by Arantxa Parra of Spain 1-6, 7-6 (4), 6-0. Parra won only her fifth match this year.
Australian Open semifinalist Patty Schnyder, seeded No. 12, beat Claudine Schaul of Luxembourg 7-5, 4-6, 6-1 and set up an all-Swiss second-round match with Marie-Gayanay Mikaelian, who downed Jie Zheng of China 6-1, 2-6, 6-3.
Grand Prix SAR
Top-seeded Emilie Loit of France came back from a set down to beat Sania Mirza of India 5-7, 6-4, 6-2 Monday and advance to the second round at the Grand Prix SAR in Casablanca on Monday.
Earlier, Marta Marrero of Spain upset fifth-seeded Iveta Benesova of the Czech Republic 3-6, 6-3, 6-1 in a match almost identical to their first meeting in Casablanca 12 months ago. Back then, Marrero also won in three sets, and downed the then seventh-seeded Benesova en route to her first tour semifinals.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier