Roger Federer thrashed Andre Agassi 6-3, 6-1 in the Dubai Open on Saturday and will meet Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia in a third final this year.
Top-seeded Federer beat fourth-seeded Agassi for a sixth straight time, and even more impressively than his straight-sets victory in the Australian Open quarterfinals last month.
Federer, the two-time defending Dubai champion, will play eighth-seeded Ljubicic only a week after barely edging the big-serving Croat in the Rotterdam final. Last month, Federer downed Ljubicic in the Doha final.
"Hopefully, I will have a few spectators on my side tomorrow," Ljubicic said after firing 13 aces to knock out fifth-seeded Tommy Robredo of Spain 6-4, 6-3 in the other semifinal.
Federer and Agassi had to double up on the day after beating Russian opponents in quarterfinals which had been postponed from Friday, because of rain. Federer downed seventh-seeded Mikhail Youzhny 6-3, 7-5, and Agassi topped No. 6 Nikolay Davydenko 6-4, 7-6 (4).
Australian Wayne Arthurs earned his second career final appearance with a 7-5, 7-6 (2) semifinal victory over Christophe Rochus of Belgium.
Arthurs, 33 and the second-oldest player on the ATP Tour, advanced to today's final against the winner of the other semifinal match between defending champion Vince Spadea of the US and No. 3 seed Mario Ancic of Croatia.
Top-seeded Flavia Pennetta breezed past fellow Italian Antonella Serra Zanetti, 6-2, 6-1 to reach the women's final for the second successive year.
She will meet Slovakia's Ludmila Cervanova, who upset fifth-seeded Dally Randriantefy of Madagascar 2-6, 7-5, 6-1 in the semifinals.
Pennetta fell in last year's final to Iveta Benesova of the Czech Republic. This year she's made a better start, winning in Bogota last weekend for her second career title.
Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova rallied to beat fourth-seeded Alicia Molik of Australia 4-6, 6-1, 6-4 in the finaland earn her second WTA Tour title this month.
"It was a great match with lots of tense moments," said Sharapova. "I couldn't do anything in the first set because Alicia played so well."
Molik broke second-seeded Sharapova in the third game for the first set, and appeared headed for her second singles title.
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