The US overcame a trio of high-profile injury absences, with James Blake and outsider Wayne Odesnik rising to the doubles occasion to ice a 2-1 win over the Czech Republic at the ARAG World Team Cup.
The Monday heroics from the eighth-ranked Blake and unfancied No. 103 Odesnik helped cushion the surprise absences of Andy Roddick and powerhouse doubles twins Bob and Mike Bryan.
All three were announced as injury pullouts, with Roddick due to miss the French Open because of a back and shoulder problem which sent him home from Rome after a mid-match semi-final pullout only days ago.
PHOTO: AP
Blake and his inexperienced partner combined to defeat Czech No. 1 Tomas Berdych and doubles ace Pavel Vizner 0-6, 7-5, 10-8.
Roddick’s brother John, US coach at this week’s eight-nation event, revealed that his sibling would stay in the US for the rest of the clay season.
“He had five or six days off and then we had three days of training. Last Friday, the injury flared again. Our specialist in New York said it is inflammation.
“Andy needs 10 days to rest and I’d be surprised if he were not ready for Queen’s [start of the pre-Wimbledon grass season on June 9],” he added.
Roddick said that his brother had been feeling good on clay: “He was optimistic about the French and in a good frame of mind.
“This season he was feeling comfortable on the clay and he liked his chances. He’s really disappointed not to be able to play,” he said.
Host Germany thrilled home fans with a doubles revival, substitutes Philipp Petzschner and Christopher Kas completing a 2-1 win as they beat S-Spain’s Feliciano Lopez and Marcel Granollers- Pujol 6-7 (5-7), 6-4, 10-5 (match tiebreak).
Lopez had leveled the two-day tie at 1-1 with his defeat of Denis Gremelmayr, substituting for ailing Nicolas Kiefer 6- 4, 6-3.
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