Maria Sharapova advanced to the final of the Pacific Life Open by defeating Martina Hingis 6-3, 6-3 in a match of former No. 1s on Friday.
Sharapova will face either top-seeded Justine Henin-Hardenne or Elena Dementieva of Russia in Saturday's final.
The 18-year-old Russian was better at holding serve than Hingis in a sloppy match, their third in seven weeks. Hingis beat Sharapova in Tokyo, and Sharapova won in Dubai last month.
Sharapova served for the first set at 5-2 but lost the game, then broke Hingis a third time to clinch the set.
Third-seeded Sharapova led 4-1 in the second, but Hingis, a wild card, brought it back on serve in the seventh game, only to drop the eighth to love. Sharapova served out, winning on an unreturnable serve.
"She tried to mix it up a little bit at the end of the first set, and I knew physically it was going to be harder," Sharapova said.
"I told myself, no matter how many balls it takes I'm going to make one more ball than her. Mentally, that's how I won."
Sharapova also reached the final of her last tournament in Dubai, where she lost to Henin-Hardenne.
In a men's quarterfinal, James Blake of the US defeated Igor Andreev of Russia 6-1, 6-4 and ensured he will rise into the world top 10 rankings for the first time when they are updated on Monday.
Since August, 14th-ranked Blake has compiled a 39-10 match record with four titles -- two this year in Sydney and Las Vegas -- and one runner-up finish. Three wins in that time have been against Andreev, who knocked out Andy Roddick in the fourth round.
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