Swede Thomas Johansson, winner of his home event in 2000 and 2004, saved four match points in one dramatic game to upset top seed James Blake 3-6, 6-1, 7-6 (7/3) in Saturday's semi-final at the Stockholm Open.
The 32-year-old was hoping to continue his giant-killing act in yesterday's final in which he faced the huge serve of Croatian Ivo Karlovic.
Johansson reached the final as he ended the American's 13-match win streak in the Swedish capital. Blake had never lost at the Kungligahalen and had 2005 and 2006 titles to prove it.
Karlovic, the seventh seed, fired off four straight aces to easily dig himself out of danger and wrap up a 6-4, 6-3 semi-final win over German Tommy Haas.
The towering Croatian leads the ATP with 1,108 aces in the season and could beat the all-time mark of 1,477, set in 1996 by Goran Ivanisevic.
The 32-year-old Johansson staged a mighty fighback as he saved four Blake match points in the dramatic 12th game of the final set, salvaging a total of five overall.
His win backed up a Davis Cup victory last month over the American in a losing semi-final effort at Gothenburg.
Both men struck 10 aces with Johansson playing tough defense as he saved a dozen of 14 break points. Johansson improved to 24-11; he and Karlovic stand 2-2.
Blake took treatment on his back stretched out on court while trailing 0-5 in the second set.
Karlovic, who has shot into the top 25 after standing outside the 100 mark at the start the season, was untouchable on serve with 15 aces against Haas.
The Croatian was playing his third semi-final in seven weeks after New Haven and Tokyo.
Novak Djokovic claimed a comfortable 6-4, 6-3 victory over unseeded Andreas Seppi of Italy on Saturday to reach the final of the Vienna ATP event and will next face Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland, who defeated Spaniard Juan Carlos Ferrero 7-5, 6-1.
Both Djokovic and Seppi took time to settle, with Seppi breaking in the opening game but immediately dropping his own serve to love. Each player continued to earn break opportunities, with the top seeded Serb fighting off four to hold for 2-1, and Seppi saving one at 2-1 and a further two at 3-2.
Djokovic finally made the breakthrough at 5-4, forcing a forehand error to claim the set.
In the second set, Seppi lost his serve from 40-0 to gift Djokovic a break for 3-1, and the Serb held off a break point at 4-2 with a brilliantly executed crosscourt winner before going on to claim a place in his seventh final of the year.
Wawrinka dominated most of the match against a subdued Ferrero, intimidating the Spanish former world No. 1 by winning the opening four games. Ferrero then staged a comeback, leveling at 4-4, before Wawrinka re-established his dominance.
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