Sania Mirza jumped for joy at midcourt when her last forehand fell untouched, completing a 4-6, 7-5, 7-6 (5) win over Akiko Morigami at the Bank of West Classic.
India's top tennis player has a large fan base in the Bay Area and the group made sure their cheers, hoots and hollers were heard in her first-round match on Tuesday.
"I always love to come to a big stadium and hear them," Mirza said of her supporters. "The crowd really got me going."
PHOTO: AP
Morigami played in the final at Cincinnati on Sunday and Mirza was a semi-finalist there on Saturday. They both had plenty of energy for the match, which lasted more than three hours.
"The whole match was a matter of a couple points either way," Mirza said. "[Morigami] is in good form and playing well. She didn't miss. I had to try and change my game plan."
Mirza, who underwent right knee surgery in March and missed 10 weeks, required a medical timeout near the end of the third set, although it was due to cramping in her left quad.
"I would never call for a trainer at 6-5 in the third set if I didn't have to," Mirza said. "I started to feel it when I served and I noticed I was sweating and very tight."
Sixth-seeded Tatiana Golovin and eighth-seeded Sybille Bammer were early first-round winners.
Golovin, who won her first career WTA Tour title at Amelia Island earlier in the year, topped qualifier Viktoriya Kutuzova 6-2, 6-2.
Bammer, who also won her first tour championship at Pattaya City, beat 29th-ranked Ai Sugiyama 6-4, 6-2.
Roddick rolls past wild card
Andy Roddick rolled past wild card Alex Kuznetsov 6-4, 6-0 in the first round of the Indianapolis Tennis Championships on Tuesday.
The top-seeded Roddick didn't face a break point, and improved his record on the hardcourts of the Indianapolis Tennis Center to 17-2.
"I actually don't think I served that well," said Roddick, who had a first-serve percentage of 52 percent (22-of-42), but won 86 percent of those he put in play.
The two-time Indianapolis champion, who was the runner-up to James Blake last year, had eight aces and no double faults.
In earlier matches, No. 3 seed Dmitry Tursunov and No. 4 Mardy Fish advanced to the second round.
"I was playing clean tennis. I wasn't giving away points. He was having to force the issue and I think that caught up with him," said Roddick, who will play Evgeny Korolev in the second round.
Defending champion and No. 2 seed Blake, coming off an upset in the final of last week's ATP stop in Los Angeles, squeezed by Swedish veteran Thomas Johansson 7-5, 7-6 (9).
Moya ousts defending champ
Defending champion Stanislas Wawrinka was eliminated in the first round of the Croatia Open by former four-time winner Carlos Moya 6-3, 6-2 on Tuesday.
Also, the return of local star Ivan Ljubicic as the third seed lasted only two hours as he lost to Andrei Pavel of Romania 7-6 (5), 7-5 for the first time in six years. Ljubicic, a two-time champ on the tour this year, was making his first appearance in Umag since 2002.
"I am also very pleased with my form," sixth-seeded Moya said.
In the absence of Rafael Nadal, who stopped Moya in the last eight at Roland Garros, Moya quipped, "Now I can win" in Umag, where he triumphed in 1996, 2001, 2002 and 2003. Moya has a record of 39-8 in Umag.
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