James Blake rehabilitated his clay court game on Tuesday as the French Open countdown began, sending the US into a 1-0 led over Argentina at the ARAG World Team Cup.
Sweden secured an unbeatable 2-0 scoreline over the Czech Republic through Robin Soderling and Thomas Johansson.
Soderling began the day as he beat Tomas Berdych 6-4, 1-6, 6-3 while the veteran Johansson ended it 6-2, 4-6, 7-6 (7-5) to hold off a fightback from Michal Tabara.
PHOTO: AP
Yesterday’s doubles would be for pride with the Red group tie now decided.
World number eight Blake recovered nicely after losing his opening singles this week against Berdych to come good on his second opportunity at the eight-nation event.
His defeat of demoralized Guillermo Canas 7-6 (7-4), 6-4 paved the way for substitute teammate Wayne Odesnik to hopefully seize control of the tie when he faced Juan Chela later.
“I felt pretty confident to beat a guy like Canas, who makes you work hard on every single point,” Blake said. “Today I played some of my best tennis.”
“I was patient when I needed to be and went for the shots, kept the pressure on him. I had to earn almost every point out there,” he said.
Blake went through on his after saving a pair of break points in the last game which left Canas flinging his racket to the clay in despair after just over 90 minutes.
Philipp Kohlschreiber put host Germany into control with a win over Italy’s Potito Starace 6-2, 7-6 (7-5), coming from 1-5 down in the second set.
“I just wanted it too much and made a lot of mistakes and took a lot of bad decisions,” the national No. 1 said. “I got frustrated but then forgot and things got better.
“I’ve beaten a good play player. We won the first tie in our group and that whets the appetite,” he said.
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