Luis Horna of Peru upset third-seeded Ivan Ljubicic 7-6 (5), 6-4 on Tuesday in the second round of the Hypo Group International.
The No. 7-ranked Ljubicic produced 10 aces and missed the only break point in the first set, but lost the tiebreaker 7-5 to Horna, who is ranked 82nd.
Horna lost only two points in his service in the second set, using an early break to seal the victory.
Fourth-seeded Lleyton Hewitt defeated Sergio Roitman of Argentina 6-2, 6-2 to advance to the second round.
"I have been playing really well lately," Hewitt said. "A lot of people wrote me off after my first-round exit in Rome, but you can never write me off."
Earlier on Tuesday, Nikolay Davydenko started his title defense with a 6-3, 6-0 victory over Ruben Ramirez Hidalgo of Spain.
The top-seeded Davydenko dominated throughout, facing little resistance from his Spanish opponent.
"It's great to start with a comfortable win, but I don't know if I was playing well," Davydenko said. "I had too many unforced errors in the first set, and he didn't really fight for it in the second set. This was no real test for my current form."
In the second round, Davydenko will face Ecuador's Nicolas Lapentti, who defeated Martin Verkerk of the Netherlands, 6-4, 7-6 (4).
Juan Monaco of Argentina also advanced, upsetting sixth-seeded Jurgen Melzer of Austria 6-3, 6-1 in a match that finished just before rain interrupted play in Poertschach for more than an hour.
Melzer said he was thrown off his game by a disputable line call while serving at 3-4 in the first set. After that, he won only one more game in the match.
"I got distracted by that decision, for sure," said Melzer, who split from long-term coach Karl-Heinz Wetter last week. "But in the end, I don't think it influenced the outcome of the match too much. Monaco was better and dictated the pace of the game."
Top-seeded Maria Sharapova and Venus Williams advanced at the Istanbul Cup on Tuesday to continue their preparations for next week's French Open.
Sharapova, who missed two scheduled tournaments this year because of various injuries, beat Tsvetana Pironkova of Bulgaria 6-4, 7-6 in the second round to advance to the quarter-finals.
The fourth-seeded Williams routed Tatiana Poutchek 6-1, 6-2 in the first round.
Williams, the 2005 champion, will meet Aravane Rezai of France in the second round of the US$200,000 clay-court warmup for Roland Garros.
"I haven't played at any grand slams this year but that will be a great place to start," said Williams, who missed this year's Australia Open because of injury.
Patty Schnyder beat Taiwan's Chan Yung-jan (
Catalina Castano of Colombia defeated sixth-seeded Anna-Lena Groenefeld 7-6, 6-2, while Meghann Shaughnessy of the US beat eighth-seeded Sania Mirza India, 6-4, 6-3.
Fifth-seeded Marion Bartoli of France breezed past Australian player Nicole Kriz 6-1, 6-0 on Tuesday to advance to the second round of the US$175,000 Internationaux de Strasbourg.
In other matches involving seeded players, No. 6 Anabel Medina Garrigues of Spain beat Yuliana Fedak of Ukraine 6-4, 6-3, while Italy's Maria Elena Camerin eliminated 10th-seeded Nicole Pratt of Austraia 6-4, 7-6 (3).
Australia's Alicia Molik needed two-and-a-half hours and 12 aces to subdue New Zealand's Leanne Baker 7-6 (3), 2-6, 7-6 (5), while Tatjana Malek of Germany took only 44 minutes to dispense with France's Emilie Bacquet, 6-0, 6-1.
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