British No. 1 Andy Murray got off to a winning start at Queen’s Club on Tuesday after Sebastien Grosjean pulled out with a leg injury just two games into their second round match.
Murray will be relieved to have advanced with the minimum of effort against a dangerous opponent, but the sixth seed won’t be so happy that he missed out on the chance to get some much-needed practice on grass.
This was Murray’s first singles tournament on the surface for almost two years after he missed the last grass-court campaign with a wrist injury.
The Scot, Britain’s only hope of success at Wimbledon, started well enough and broke in the first game thanks to a Grosjean double fault. Grosjean, twice a Queen’s finalist in 2003 and 2004, immediately called for treatment at the change-over and resumed only after having his left leg heavily strapped above his knee. He looked slightly restricted as Murray held serve in the next game and signaled that he would have to call it quits.
Fernando Verdasco, seeded nine, crashed out against Croatia’s Mario Ancic in the second round.
Ancic, the last man to beat Roger Federer at Wimbledon, is one of the most dangerous unseeded players in the draw and he underlined that status with a 7-6 (8/6), 6-4 win over the Spaniard.
Paul-Henri Mathieu, the French seventh seed, survived a tough examination from Croatia’s Marin Cilic to reach round three, eventually prevailing 6-3, 3-6, 6-4.
He won the first set after an early break but Cilic responded by taking the second. Mathieu was broken as he served for the match in the final set, but Cilic squandered his chance to stay alive as the Frenchman broke to go through.
Nicolas Mahut resumed his role as Queen’s giant-killer with a dramatic victory over Spain’s Feliciano Lopez, seeded 14th, as the rest of the first round ties concluded.
Fernando Gonzalez held off a brave challenge from British qualifier Richard Bloomfield to go through 7-6 (7/5), 6-3. Gonzalez, the Chilean world No. 15, was pushed all the way as Bloomfield played way above his lowly 412th position in the world rankings.
British wildcard Daniel Evans endured a nightmare debut on the ATP Tour as the teenager was routed by Belgium’s Xavier Malisse 6-1, 6-1 in just 49 minutes. Malisse proved his ability by reaching the Wimbledon semi-finals in 2002.
In contrast, Evans is almost as green as the Queen’s Club lawns. The 18-year-old looked struck by stage fright from the start as he committed a string of unforced errors and was blown away with embarrassing ease by the Belgian.
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
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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