Romanian teen Sorana Cirstea upset third-seeded Anna Chakvetadze 6-2, 1-6, 6-2 to reach the last 16 at the Family Circle Cup on Tuesday.
“Up until now, I actually believed hard courts were my best surface but now I think I’m going to change my mind,” said Cirstea, who has won consecutive three-set matches on the green clay at the US$1.3 million tournament.
Cirstea, who turned 18 last week, pulled off her first win over a top-10 player. Chakvetadze, ranked 80 spots higher at No. 6, won the Paris Indoors in February but has slumped since, going 4-6 on the tour.
PHOTO :AP
“She just pushed the ball back and I made mistakes,” Chakvetadze said. “I think it’s just the way I’m playing right now.”
Also through to the third round were No. 5 Serena Williams, No. 6 Marion Bartoli, No. 8 Dinara Safina and No. 10 Agnes Szavay.
Williams struggled past Gisela Dulko of Argentina 6-3, 6-4, overcoming losing her serve three times.
“I got a slow start in general. It was cold and it was just a late match. So those are just the excuses that I’m giving myself as to why I served bad,” Williams said after her 11th straight win, including titles in Bangalore and Key Biscayne.
Bartoli won her opening match for only the fourth time in nine tournaments this year when she outlasted Casey Dellacqua of Australia 7-5, 4-6, 6-1, Safina defeated Lourdes Dominguez Lino of Spain, 6-1, 6-4, and Szavay, a quarter-finalist last week at Amelia Island, beat Ai Sugiyama of Japan 7-5, 3-6, 6-4.
Tainan TSG Hawks slugger Steven Moya, who is leading the CPBL in home runs, has withdrawn from this weekend’s All-Star Game after the unexpected death of his wife. Moya’s wife began feeling severely unwell aboard a plane that landed at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on Friday evening. She was rushed to a hospital, but passed away, the Hawks said in a statement yesterday. The franchise is assisting Moya with funeral arrangements and hopes fans who were looking forward to seeing him at the All-Star Game can understand his decision to withdraw. According to Landseed Medical Clinic, whose staff attempted to save Moya’s wife,
Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt yesterday backed Nick Champion de Crespigny to be the team’s “roving scavenger” after handing him a shock debut in the opening Test against the British and Irish Lions Test in Brisbane. Hard man Champion de Crespigny, who spent three seasons at French side Castres before moving to the Western Force this year, is to get his chance tomorrow with first-choice blindside flanker Rob Valetini not fully fit. His elevation is an eye-opener, preferred to Tom Hooper, but Schmidt said he had no doubt about his abilities. “I keep an eye on the Top 14 having coached there many years
ON A KNEE: In the MLB’s equivalent of soccer’s penalty-kicks shoot-out, the game was decided by three batters from each side taking three swings each off coaches Kyle Schwarber was nervous. He had played in Game 7 of the MLB World Series and homered for the US in the World Baseball Classic (WBC), but he had never walked up to the plate in an All-Star Game swing-off. No one had. “That’s kind of like the baseball version of a shoot-out,” Schwarber said after homering on all three of his swings, going down to his left knee on the final one, to overcome a two-homer deficit. That held up when Jonathan Aranda fell short on the American League’s final three swings, giving the National League a 4-3 swing-off win after
NBA team owners on Tuesday authorized league officials to begin an in-depth analysis regarding expansion, but NBA commissioner Adam Silver said there was no timetable for any changes. The NBA board of governors meeting in Las Vegas marked the first time team owners officially discussed expanding the league beyond 30 teams, but Silver said they went no deeper than requesting more research into the possibility. “There is a significant step now in that we’re now engaging in this in-depth analysis,” Silver said. “It’s something we weren’t prepared to do before, but beyond that, it’s really day one of that analysis. In terms
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