Jo-Wilfried Tsonga needed a fast change of tactics to reach the quarter-finals of the Barcelona Open as he defeated Spaniard Nicolas Almagro 5-7, 6-1, 6-4 on Thursday.
France’s third seed, playing the clay event for the first time, finds himself in a surprise showdown with Thiemo de Bakker, who upset 2001 winner and seventh seed Juan Carlos Ferrero 7-6 (7/2), 3-6, 7-6 (7/4).
There were only two bright spots for Spain, with six of eight representatives from the country losing.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Monte Carlo runner-up Fernando Verdasco, seeded fifth, rallied to beat Austrian Jurgen Melzer 3-6, 7-6 (7/1), 6-3, while two-time losing finalist David Ferrer won in 44 minutes when Simone Bolelli of Italy quit injured trailing 6-0, 3-0. Swedish second seed Robin Soderling went through after he defeated Feliciano Lopez 6-3, 6-2.
Tsonga said he had to shift strategy back to the fast-paced game he knows best to get out of danger.
“I wasn’t sliding well at the start, the clay was quite heavy,” Tsonga said. “I was struggling to adjust myself to the ball. Then I started to play a bit more how I play on hard court, which enabled me to get back into the match in the second and third sets.”
Tsonga, now 17-7 for the season and looking for his first ever title on clay, says he faces a tough task against Dutchman De Bakker.
“It will be difficult, I played him in Davis Cup on indoor clay,” Tsonga said of the 21-year-old, who is ranked 67th in the world. “It was a tough match, very difficult. He’s going to go up in the rankings in the next few months and has a lot of potential.”
Tsonga has now beaten the 15th-seeded Almagro in all three of their meetings this year, earning victories at the Australian Open after a 9-7 fifth set and a week ago in straight sets at Monte Carlo.
Tsonga was beaten on a late break of serve in the opening set by Almagro, one of eight Spanish players who began the third round, but Tsonga imposed his big game for 5-0 in the second set on the way back to level-pegging at a set apiece.
The seed went up an early break in the third set to seal the victory, firing eight aces and breaking four times.
The eighth-seeded Ferrer, a former top 10 player now standing 17th, will next meet Brazilian 13th seed Thomas Bellucci, a winner over Spain’s Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 6-4, 6-4. Ferrer is appearing in a Barcelona quarter-final for the fourth year in a row.
Argentine Eduardo Schwank defeated another Spaniard, Ivan Navarro Pastor, 6-3, 7-6 (9/7).
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