Defending champion Roger Federer won a third-set tiebreaker yesterday to complete a straight-set victory over Sebastien Grosjean and move into the Wimbledon final.
The top-seeded Swiss star needed 29 minutes and four match points to finish off a 6-2, 6-3, 7-6 (6) win over the 10th-seeded Frenchman, extending his grasscourt winning streak to 23 matches.
The semifinal had been suspended with Federer two games from victory -- 6-2, 6-3, 4-3 -- when play was suspended late Friday after a day of rain delays.
PHOTO: AFP
"I'm very pleased," Federer said. "It's very difficult to stop at such a moment of the match. I'm very relieved. You never know what happens if he can turn it around."
Federer will face the winner of the semifinal between No. 2-seeded Andy Roddick and 20-year-old Mario Antic of Croatia.
That match, which was suspended Friday evening with Roddick leading 6-4, 4-3, 30-40, resumed on Court 1.
PHOTO: AFP
Ancic won the second set 6-4 and led 5-4 on serve in the third when play was suspended by rain early yesterday afternoon.
Federer looked like he might close out the match quickly Saturday, but he wound up fighting from behind -- including 4-0 in the tiebreaker -- in blustery conditions.
Federer had two match points on Grosjean's serve at 5-4, but the Frenchman saved both with service winners. Then Federer played a loose game and Grosjean broke for the first time to go up 6-5.
But with Grosjean serving for the set, Federer settled down and broke back, shouting "Come on!" after smacking a forehand crosscourt pass for 6-6.
The momentum swung back and forth in the tiebreaker, with Grosjean winning the first four points and Federer the next four. Federer earned his third match point at 6-5, but hit a backhand wide. He set up the fourth with a forehand volley, then converted with an inside-out forehand approach followed by an overhead.
"I had to really fight hard to actually get to the tiebreaker," Federer said. "I had two match points before the tiebreak and didn't make them and suddenly he was serving for the set in the third. I had to come back in a tiebreaker."
Both players had 25 unforced errors, but Federer finished with 49 winners, compared to 23 for Grosjean.
The women's final, meanwhile, was to be contested later yesterday between two-time defending champion Serena Williams and 17-year-old Maria Sharapova.
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