World No. 3 Novak Djokovic was knocked out of the season-ending Masters Cup after his second consecutive defeat yesterday.
The 20-year-old went down 6-4, 6-2 to Frenchman Richard Gasquet in a flat display which rules him out of finishing among the top two in the Gold Group round robin.
Djokovic, who also lost in straight sets to David Ferrer, was tipped as a main contender for the US$4.45 million year-end tournament featuring the world's top eight players.
PHOTO: AFP
slow start
But the subdued Serb got off to a slow start and was a double break down before showing signs of life, breaking back but still losing the set, 6-4.
Gasquet's backhand continued to trouble the Serb and he was broken for 2-1 in the second before immediately returning the favor, drilling a winner down the line.
However Djokovic was struggling on serve and he threw his racquet to the floor in disgust as he went 0-40 down in the next game, netting a low backhand volley to fall behind again.
ruthless
The game was up for the lackluster Serb and Gasquet, ranked eighth, capitalized by breaking again for 5-2 before serving out the match in one hour and 25 minutes.
The result is the second upset at the Masters Cup after top-ranked Roger Federer's shock loss to Fernando Gonzalez on Monday.
Djokovic had won both his previous matches against Gasquet, including this year's final in Estoril.
The young Serb is coming off a breakthrough year with five tournament wins and his first Grand Slam final, reaching the No. 3 ranking in July.
Gasquet, the last player to qualify for the year-ending showpiece, has also enjoyed his best season so far, winning his fifth career title in Mumbai in one of three finals appearances.
The Frenchman is still in the running for the semi-finals after his loss to world No. 2 Rafael Nadal.
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