Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin-Hardenne reached the semifinals of the J&S Cup on Friday, moving closer to a championship match between the two former top-ranked Belgians.
Seventh-seeded Clijsters beat Russia's Elena Bovina 7-6 (4), 6-3, while Henin-Hardenne downed No. 4 Patty Schnyder 6-1, 6-2.
In the other quarterfinals, Ana Ivanovic defeated Nathalie Dechy of France 7-6 (2), 6-4, and No. 2 Svetlana Kuznetsova beat Italy's Silvia Farina Elia 6-3, 6-4.
PHOTO: AFP
In today's semis, Klijsters will play Kuznetsova and Henin-Hardenne will face Ivanovic.
The two Belgian stars both recently returned after long injury layoffs. Clijsters won tournaments at Indian Wells and Miami, while Henin-Hardenne won the Charleston title.
Clijsters led Bovina 4-2 in the first set before the Russian rallied to force a tiebreaker. In the second set, Clijsters dropped her serve when leading 4-2, but broke with a forehand winner down the line and served out the match for here 17th straight victory.
"My serve was too inconsistent," Clijsters said. "I was feeling a few aches in my shoulder. I don't know if that was why I wasn't serving as well today."
The unseeded Henin-Hardenne beat Schnyder in an hour.
After dominating the opening set, Henin-Hardenne was broken twice at the start of the second. She broke straight back each time and won five games in a row to close out the match.
Fourth-seeded Tommy Haas withstood 19 aces Friday to beat the Australia's Wayne Arthurs 7-6 (6), 7-6 (5) for a place in the BMW Open semifinals.
Haas will next play fifth-seeded Andrei Pavel, who beat Raemon Sluiter Raemon Sluiter 6-1, 3-6, 6-3.
Top-seeded David Nalbandian cruised past Juan Monaco 6-0, 6-4 to set up a semifinal against Jarkko Nieminen, who rallied to defeat Michal Mertinak 3-6, 6-1, 6-4.
Haas is the only German player to have made it past the first round in the 323,250 euros (US$420,000) event. A finalist in Munich in 2000, he is seeking to become the first home player to win the clay-court event since Michael Stich 11 years ago.
Arthurs saved a break point at 3-3 in the first set, the only time he had trouble on his serve.
A serve-and-volley player whose game is ill-suited for the slow red clay, Arthurs squandered a 4-2 lead in the first tiebreaker.
He used his reach to put away a fierce volley for 5-4, but Haas managed to come back and used a backhand passing shot on his first set point to go one set up.
Arthurs' serve kept him the match but he hit a ball long to give Haas a 3-1 lead in the second tiebreaker and never recovered.
Haas hit a service winner to gain three match points. Arthurs saved two, then put an easy backhand into the net to send the German into the last four.
Carlos Moya of Spain beat France's Paul-Henri Mathieu 6-4, 6-2 to move into the semifinals of the clay-court Estoril Open.
Argentina's Gaston Gaudio also advanced with a 6-2, 6-2 win over Feliciano Lopez.
Tommy Robredo downed Davide Sanguinetti by the same score, and Guillermo Garcia-Lopez made it a trio of Spaniards in the last four by knocking out Juan Antonio Marin 6-1, 2-6, 6-3.
Top-seeded Moya, looking more assured than he did in his three-hour second-round match against Juan Carlos Ferrero, broke Mathieu's serve in the fifth game on his way to taking the first set.
Mathieu had defeated Moya on the hard outdoor surface at the Chennai Open three months ago.
The Frenchman lost his serve on a double fault in the third game of the second set.
French Open champion Gaudio, seeded second, broke his opponent's serve in the opening game of the first set before taking a 5-1 lead. Lopez made 16 unforced errors in the 25-minute set.
In other quarterfinals, fourth-seeded Tommy Robredo had little trouble against Italy's Davide Sanguinetti who, at 32, is the tournament's oldest player.
In the women's tournament, second-seeded Dinara Safina reached the semifinals by beating American Jill Craybas 6-4, 6-2.
Argentina's Gisela Dulko, seeded third, beat ninth-seeded Jie Zheng of China 6-2, 6-1, while fourth-seeded Na Li took less than an hour to overcome Dally Randriantefy of Madagascar, 6-3, 6-1.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
A soccer jersey carrying a national map including disputed Western Sahara has become a hot commodity in Morocco after a diplomatic dispute with Algeria. Retailers said RS Berkane jerseys have been flying off the shelves after a Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cup match against Algerian club USM Alger was canceled last month over the jerseys. “We are overwhelmed by the influx of messages and requests,” said Brahim Rabii, representative of the official RS Berkane jersey distributor. Algeria broke off diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021, partly over the issue of Western Sahara. The former Spanish colony is largely controlled by Morocco, but claimed