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Garrigues reaches final, Taiwan's Chan tumbles

Spain's Anabel Medina Garrigues hits a return to Switzerland's Timea Bacsinsky in their semi-final match in Strasbourg, France, on Friday. PHOTO: AFP

Defending champion Anabel Medina Garrigues beat Timea Bacsinszky of Switzerland 6-3, 6-3 on Friday to advance to the final at the Strasbourg International.

The sixth-seeded Spaniard broke serve five times to set up a final against No. 5 Katarina Srebotnik of Slovenia, who ended the run of unseeded Taiwanese player Chan Yung-jan (詹詠然) 6-1, 6-7 (8), 6-4.

Medina Garrigues, who also won in 2005, is bidding for an eighth career title and a first since winning last year at Strasbourg.

In a match lasting two hours, 19 minutes, Srebotnik broke Chan’s serve seven times.

The clay-court tournament is a warmup to the French Open, which starts tomorrow.



■ HYPO GROUP

AP, POERTSCHACH, AUSTRIA

After defeating Russian compatriot Igor Kunitsyn 6-3, 6-2 in Friday’s semi-finals, top-seeded Nikolay Davy­denko was set for a showdown with defending champion Juan Monaco in the final of the Hypo Group International yesterday.

Second-seeded Monaco saved three match points before beating Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia 6-4, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (4) on Friday.



■ WORLD TEAM CUP

AP, DUSSELDORF, GERMANY

Dmitry Tursunov won his singles and doubles matches to lead Russia over Germany 3-0 on Friday and a place in the World Team Cup final against Sweden.

Sweden beat the US 3-0 in the last of the round-robin matches and will seek a fourth title in its sixth final. Russia has yet to win the title after finishing runner-up three straight years from 2000 to 2002.

Tursunov beat Nicolas Kiefer 6-4, 3-6, 7-5 in the Blue Group match to add to Igor Andreev’s win over Philipp Kohlschreiber. In the doubles, Tursunov and Mikhail Youzhny beat Christopher Kas and Philipp Petzschner 7-6 (2), 6-3.

Sweden had already qualified for the final from the Red Group by winning both of Thursday’s singles matches. It completed the victory as Robert Lindstedt and Robin Soderling crushed Wayne Odesnik and Bobby Reynolds 6-1, 6-2.

Kiefer converted just one of 13 break points against Tursunov, holding two break points for a 5-3 lead in the first set before netting a backhand to give Tursunov a break for 5-4.

In other matches, Italy earned a 2-1 win over Spain, as Simone Bolelli defeated Feliciano Lopez 6-4, 6-3 and then teamed with Potito Starace to beat Lopez and Marcel Granollers 6-4, 7-6 (3).

David Ferrer got Spain’s only win by beating Starace on Thursday.

Argentina defeated the Czech Republic 2-1 thanks to Lucas Arnold and Sebastian Prieto who beat Tomas Berdych and Pavel Vizner 7-6 (3), 6-3.
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