Andy Roddick has been unbeatable at Queen's, the quaint west London club that hosts the most famous warm-up for Wimbledon.
Roddick won his third consecutive title at Queens on Sunday, defeating Ivo Karlovic of Croatia 7-6 (7), 7-6 (4) in the American's last warm-up before the famous fortnight on grass. Only former Wimbledon champions John McEnroe and Lleyton Hewitt have managed the feat.
Roddick came close the last two years at Wimbledon, losing in the finals last season and the semifinals in 2003 -- both times to Roger Federer.
Federer is sure to be the top seed, followed by either former Wimbledon champion Hewitt or Roddick when the All England Club announces its seedings this week.
"Common knowledge is you're going to have to beat the best players somewhere along the way," said Roddick, who barely eked out a victory against the 2.08m Karlovic, the tallest player in tennis.
Roger Federer figured Sunday's final against Australian Open champion Marat Safin would be a lot easier than it turned out to be.
Safin makes no secret of his dislike for grass courts, where he has recorded some terrible results, but he surprised the top-ranked Swiss with one of his best matches ever on the surface in a 6-4, 6-7 (6), 6-4 loss.
Federer, who also won the last two tournaments at Halle, captured his 20th straight ATP final and 29th straight match on grass. He will be looking for his third straight title at Wimbledon, which starts June 20.
Top-seeded Maria Sharapova completed her Wimbledon warm-up Sunday by defending her DFS Classic title with a 6-2, 4-6, 6-1 win over Jelena Jankovic of Serbia-Montenegro in the final.
The Wimbledon champion didn't serve at her best, struggled to finish points when she advanced and generally battled in the unseasonably cold weather with a lingering thigh strain.
"I will still go to Wimbledon thinking I have played well," Sharapova said. "I wasn't playing my best tennis, but I managed to get through and felt really comfortable as the matches went on."
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