Guillermo Canas won his third title of the year yesterday with a 6-1, 6-0 victory over unseeded German Lars Burgsmuller at the ATP Shanghai Open.
Burgsmuller held service in the first game, but fell in the next 11 as the Argentine wrapped up proceedings on the hardcourt at the Xian Xia Tennis Center in just 58 minutes.
"Right from the beginning I felt very confident. I knew he would go to the net," said Canas, already a winner this year at Stuttgart and Umag in Croatia.
Burgsmuller started out strong, and had a break point in the fourth game that he failed to convert.
Switching from serve and volley to baseline play, he continued to make unforced error after error and never seriously threatened in the second set.
Guangzhou Open
Li Na became the first Chinese to win a WTA singles title yesterday by cruising to a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Slovakia's Martina Sucha at the Guangzhou Open.
The 22-year-old Li, who entered the tournament in south China as a qualifier, has been in fine form all year, winning her first 28 matches of the year on the International Tennis Federation Women's Circuit.
Korea Open
Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova of Russia easily outclassed Poland's Marta Domachowska 6-1, 6-1 yesterday to claim the inaugural event.
Top-seeded Sharapova punished Domachowska with a barrage of powerful strokes to take her fifth career singles title in less than an hour at Seoul's Olympic Park.
Sharapova, 17, gave away just 15 games throughout the tournament en route to the title.
Gaz de France
Former world No. 1 Kim Clijsters' comeback from injury stalled Saturday when she withdrew from the Gaz de France Stars with pain in her left wrist midway through a semifinal match against Elena Bovina of Russia.
Dementieva, ranked No. 6 in the world, beat unseeded Maria Elena Camerin of Italy 6-3, 6-3.
Campionati
Fifth-seeded Filippo Volandri of Italy earned his fourth career ATP final after beating unseeded Juan Monaco of Argentina 6-1, 6-4 Saturday in the semifinals of the Campionati Internazionali di Sicilia.
Volandri, who had stunned Olympic champion and defending champion Nicolas Massu of Chile in the previous round, set up a showdown with No. 8 Thomas Berdych of the Czech Republic, who downed David Ferrer of Spain 7-5, 6-4 in the other semifinal.
Volandri is Italy's No. 1 player.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later